


Unread Messages

by Routcliffe



Series: Fortryllelse og Bakverk [3]
Category: Ylvis
Genre: Gen, No Sex, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 37
Words: 156,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8368408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: Seven months have passed since Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker re-encountered the hidden people of Norway, learned a few tricks, helped prevent Ragnarok, and liberated their changelings.  Now they’re back at work in a world that’s a lot bigger and weirder than they ever dreamed.  Bård’s changeling has always been good at broadcasting information, so his deepest darkest secret wouldn’t really surprise anyone.  Still, he wonders if being different is worth what it costs.  But if Brynjar Kvam doesn’t want to be a god anymore, there's someone who is happy to take all that power away from him--someone not particularly nice.  When the brothers move to protect Brynjar, Vegard finds himself battling shocking allegations that are unfortunately true.  To save himself, he agrees to give up magic, not realizing that it means giving up a whole lot more.  This leaves Bård to deal with an unruly god crafted in his own image, a neurotic changeling co-host, and a brother who is powerless, cranky, and obsessed with a mysterious glowing orb.  Then Vegard disappears, and Bård discovers that there might have been more going on than he suspected.  Vegard needs his help, but not the way he thought... and it might already be too late.





	1. Uneasy Dreams: A Prologue

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Cover art courtesy of the amazingly talented hexa-flexa-flouride on Tumblr! 
> 
> When I realized how _Unscheduled Broadcasts_ was going to end, I knew that I would leaving a very big and messy loose end, and that to write that was to commit to this. It's taken me a year because of school (which believe me is a good thing). The story is a bit dark in spots, for which I am sorry, but it won't always be. And, well, that's kind of the point.
> 
> I should add, I've taken some liberties with the timeline, liberties that I didn't know I was taking when I started to write. This imagines a Season 6 starting in September 2016, and Magnus being in Norway instead of creating panoramic monstrosities in Uzbekistan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peacemaker / Weaver / Holy / Fool / Forever Brynjar Kvam

In the heart of Oslo, Bård Ylvisåker dreams. 

He is putting his tie on, getting ready for the show. A moment after pulling the knot tight he frowns, and spits a tooth into his hand. It is whole, undamaged, with only a thin thread of pink saliva at the base. Fortunately it was a back molar, and he’s going to the dentist tomorrow anyway. He can still do the show. But then... there’s another one loose, and as he explores his tongue pushes it a little too hard and it comes free with only the smallest pain. Right canine. That’s going to be hard to cover up. He gets up, goes into the corridor. He has to tell Vegard, and as he walks, he feels another tooth loosening, one of the bottom ones right in front. As he knocks on the door it falls from its socket. The door opens, and Bård enters, holding his teeth in his hand, feeling a couple more loosening. "Bård," Vegard sighs as he does up his tie. They have to hurry. They are about to go on. "You're not gonna be able to hide that anymore." In the corridor Bård lets two more teeth tumble from his lips. One slips from his fingers and skitters into the corner, and there is no time to retrieve it now. It is a long walk. They are not late, not yet, but they are cutting it very close. Soon they will be overdue. Soon they will have to face the audience. Soon everyone will see, and know. Soon.

In sleep, his brow furrows with worry, and he tosses his head from side to side. The dream is troubling but not terrifying, and he will wake in the morning and look at his whole and beautiful smile in the mirror with a sense of profound relief, but a lingering unfocused anxiety.

***

In the heart of Oslo, Finn Weber dreams.

Lines of red yarn tie him to all of the people he cares about, and he didn't want them to be bound to him like this, but he feels guiltily glad that it makes them easier to find. As they move through their lives, the yarn gets snarled, and people get tied up to things, to each other. It displeases them. To keep them from getting angry he runs from place to place, combing out the knots, untangling everything, talking people down when they start to get frustrated. When he fails, they will break the yarn and he will be adrift, unloved. 

He is sprawled on his half of a king-sized bed. Fauns and satyrs cavort on the carved oaken headboard. Fine linen sheets are twisted around his legs. As his eyes dart back and forth behind closed lids, he starts to whimper. Next to him there is an inquisitive murmur. In a high, frightened, indistinct voice, he replies, "I can't keep up, can't keep, can't keep, I can't keep..."

From the other side of the bed a hand, shapely but clumsy, reaches out and strokes his hair. The touch quiets him and reassures him for the moment, and soothes him back into sleep.

***

The realm of the gods is not the realm of humans, and if a wave of tension, gentle but inexorable, strengthening with every passing day, laps across the sleeping minds of Midgard, Asgard at least is free of it. Unless, of course, one has roots in Midgard, and ties to its denizens.

In the heart of Asgard, Brynjar Kvam dreams. 

He is on his knees with Vegard’s blood drying on his forehead, and the change is working in his cells, and Vegard is in front of him, eyes wide and blank as the transformations drain his energy, first Finn--broken body already knitting together, cellulose turning to sinew--and then Brynjar, who knows that you just don’t do two at once, not a change this big, no human has the strength for it, but he wants this so badly, to be a man, and he knows where the energy can come from, the godhead that Vegard has told him he mustn’t keep, and this is surely a good enough way to spend it, funnelling it to the man who is risking himself to give him life, except that feeding it to Vegard who is powering his transformation is like standing on a hill of earth that someone keeps shovelling away at, and in the dream it is slipping from him as he turns into meat and he is suddenly a closed system and Vegard is dying with his life energy sapped and Finn is dying with his healing only half done and there is nothing he can do to stop it anymore and in the fading light of Vegard’s eyes Brynjar sees that the last thing Vegard knows is that Brynjar failed him...

***

In the heart of Oslo, Vegard Ylvisåker dreams.

The side of a mountain. Dazzling sunlight. The flex. (His magic is at full strength again, in the dream, and using it is a jagged pain like flexing a pulled muscle.) A note, voiced. A far lower note, thought. A minute shift, building. The roar. The shaking. Too close, it's too close. The snow. The weight. Whiteness. Darkness. Cold. Confusion. Paralysis. Suffocation. 

His own gasp wakes him up. He has flailed out in his sleep, and his hands have met Helene. He clutches at her warmth, drawing her close. She murmurs something comforting before dozing off again.

He’s not going to be able to go back to sleep so easily. Normally he would get up for a little while, but the dream has shaken him, and he doesn’t want to leave this room, where he’s warm and safe and Helene is right here. He reaches, instead, for his phone and his earbuds. But when the buds are in, before he can unlock the phone, he hears a voice, a gentle singsong. Brynjar Kvam. 

"Vegard, you cannot sleeping either?"

Maybe the thought should disturb him more, but Brynjar only ever turns up when he'd welcome the company. He doesn’t know where Brynjar is at this moment, but he knows that if he holds the thought in his head, Brynjar’s grey eye will see it. _Bad dreams._

There is a hesitation. And then, through the earbuds, Brynjar says, "Me too."

_What did you dream?_

"The same as always. A great thing depend on me and I cannot do it, and I lose much that I love. What dreamt you?"

 _Trapped in the avalanche I caused. How is..._ Vegard has made himself remember her name, the elf he trapped, the woman he nearly killed. _Dulcinea Selinael?_

"She are... oh."

_Brynjar, is she okay?_

"She are having more fun than either of us right now."

_...Oh. Well, good._

***

Lying under the perpetual summer sun in Asgard, grass and wildflowers waving gently around him, head pillowed on his coat, Brynjar sees Vegard slide back into sleep. Good, good. This is one thing he can do.

He owes Vegard, and he cannot foresee a time when he will not owe Vegard. Because that’s the thing about divinity, it doesn’t depend on anything and it won’t be shrugged off like a coat and it doesn’t run out. The godhead stayed, and Brynjar did balance everything, and he did save Vegard and Finn. But Vegard had made him a man to keep him from being a god. Brynjar saved his friend, and in doing so, betrayed him. Betrayal is woven now into his blood and bones. He is a living debt. 

Really, though, any god is a living debt, a creature that owes much because it has taken much. Except for the dead gods, and in his divine but nevertheless humble opinion that is a smarmy way of trying to get out of it. Yes, he could argue that much has been taken from him in turn: his grace, much of his stamina and strength, normal speech, normal vision, nine agonizing days. But what of the others who have lost, in their various ways, half a brain, speech, vision, the use of a limb, and gained nothing in return? 

In retrospect, there was nothing miraculous about it all. There are limits to pain, after all. Humans would probably have passed out. Well. Humans would have died in a haze of agony, welcoming the sweet release of oblivion. But changelings are made of stronger stuff, and accustomed to dealing with hardship in different ways. They are anchored and sustained in their new bodies, not by sun and water and soil, but by magic, and in times of distress, the first impulse is still to outgrow the nastiness, to turn one’s face to the sun and put down deeper roots. (This is demonstrable. It was first posited in 1915 by Jorgen Grønhånd, and confirmed in 2012 by Aeolia Hyradiel et. al., research that was later used to create a short-lived incarnation of Odin himself. The NUA research ethics committee was horrified to read the proposal, but the project had been carried illicitly out months before, and it was not without a touch of _Schadenfreude_ that they discovered the ignominious end to which it had come.)

The pain consumed everything for a day-long eternity before Brynjar learned to reach out beyond the mangled knot of agony that his body had become. He grew. For nine days, he grew, fleeing the pain and the boredom, putting rootlets into the fabric of the cosmos, finding solace in the dances of the planets and the chill of moonlight and the laughter of human children and the measured raptures of music and the sleepy yawns of wild foxes and the delicate protein structure of a perfectly turned-out soufflé. 

He had almost forgotten another life when he fell with a thud onto the cement floor of IKEA, Finn groaning and humans panicking beside him. And having returned, it was like he had never left. Except for an eternity spent exploring. Except for the roots. Except for the damage done to the brain they’d given him, and the curious ways in which it rewired itself. 

He tried to give it up, when it had served his purpose. He did try. To forget. To put it away. More specifically, to use the bits he had come to depend on as part of his everyday functioning, and to ignore the rest. He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. 

But Finn was trying to be a man now, and moreover a man who kept his promises, and that had meant he needed to go to Asgard to keep his promises to Fenrir, and with Melantha pregnant (and none of them knowing at the time how that was going to end) and the show in development, it made so much more sense to offer him a ride, and to use the old roads. To Asgard.

Bifrost had sung in his mind the way it always had, a song of joy that threatened to shake down the walls he’d built up; and the animals, Odin’s animals, fawned over him, and Huginn nibbled his earlobe (strangely tilted; he had been modelled on a man with unusual ears) and he understood what they thought he should do.

While Finn and Fenrir frolicked, getting roaring drunk and then wrestling before settling down to look at catalogues, Brynjar had lain in this sweet-scented meadow, in this very spot, fingers laced behind his head, and... was. With all of himself, which to his dismay extended even further than it had a few months ago. 

_I AM_ , he thought, and then his eyes had opened very wide, and his smile shone.

Much has been given to Brynjar Kvam. Including eternity. 

Eternity is not long enough to pay it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Rival Consoles' "Looming" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nbOnUwl3V8


	2. The New Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just another day at the office / Sun, moon, and co-stars

Pale autumn light slanted through the windows at the Concorde office. It was 16.30, and the staff had all gone home. Bård was off at what they both really hoped would be the last dentist appointment, to restore his front teeth to their straight and even perfection. The only sounds were the perpetual electronic hum of the computers and the hiss of Vegard’s breath as he completed his twenty-third--twenty-fourth--twenty- _fifth_ push-up. And then the thud as he collapsed on the slate-grey floor, panting. 

After a time, he rolled over onto his back, grinning up at the peaked ceiling. Twenty-five. This time two months ago, he'd still had to rest after taking the stairs. Now his muscles burned, but it was a good burn. 

This was kind of ridiculous. He had a perfectly good home he could go to and do push-ups in. They were still doing work on it, but there was food there, and his kids, and his exquisitely beautiful wife. But when he'd started this, a week ago, he'd chosen the office a bit on impulse, and a bit because if he failed short of even one push-up, he didn’t want them to have seen him fail, and he didn't want to be grumpy with his family. Now he had something of a routine going. Even after the broadcast on Tuesday, he'd waited until everyone had gone home, and managed eleven in the dressing room. Well, he'd been tired after the show. But here was better. This time of day was better. 

Now he tried to do a kip-up, and ended up flat on his butt, laughing softly to himself. He scrambled to his feet. These were his cycling clothes, so it didn't matter that he'd gotten them all sweaty, as long as he didn't stand idle in the wind when he got outside. 

Back in his personal office, he put on his sweatshirt over the black tank top, and then a hoodie over that, tucking his sweat-damp curls underneath the hood, and then his high-visibility cycling vest. His biceps still ached pleasantly. Life was _good._ It hadn't been for awhile, but now it was again. He was Vegard Ylvisåker, stage performer, radio host, talk show host, Home Guardsman, rockstar, pilot, husband, father of three, and--this one he didn't tell a lot of people--Level Two mage, and he was going home from his dream job to his beautiful house-in-progress and the family that he cherished more than anything, and even after twenty-five push-ups he was going to have enough energy to devote his evening to the people he loved. 

Downstairs, he walked his bicycle out to the curb. As he was putting on his helmet, he saw rapid movement out of the corner of his eye. Through the window of the French restaurant that had recently opened up across the way, a girl, a young teen by the look of things, was edging around the chairs, moving as if something was urgent. Probably on her way to the washroom or something, he thought, and started to look away, but just then she looked through the window and met his eyes, and her own eyes widened and she sped up. He could see her apologizing to the people she displaced, and he patted the air in a calming gesture. 

She ran out into the cold in only a thin sweater. "Aren’t you freezing?" he demanded. She looked at him blankly, so he tried again, in English. "Aren’t you freezing?"

"You’re worth it," she said. She was white and petite, with straight brown hair, large starry eyes, and a little gold crucifix around her neck. Her accent was American. "We waited for you to come out and then my parents said everyone was gone and you must have slipped out and there was no use so we might as well eat dinner but here you are!" She pulled out her phone. "Can I get a picture with you?"

"Sure," he said. He took her phone, because his arms were longer. He put the other arm around her, too, to give her a modicum of warmth as he took the photo. 

"Thank you," she whispered as he handed the phone back to her. Then, hesitantly, she said, as if she thought she ought not to, "I worry about you a little."

"And why is that?" he asked, honestly curious and a little concerned. They’d been very careful to keep mention of his fatigue out of the press, and by carefully marshalling his strength, Vegard had been able to keep up appearances. He thought, anyway. 

She looked down, and then toyed with her crucifix, as if drawing strength from it. "Some of the things you’ve said in interviews... I worry about..." It all came out in a rush. "I worry about your relationship with God."

"Don’t worry," he said, smiling. "We’re all right. All is forgiven. We’re fine."

Her eyes lit up. "You mean it?"

"I do."

She threw her arms around him. "Oh, thank you, Vegard, thank you!"

He chuckled, and patted her back.

She disengaged, now, and took a few steps back towards the restaurant, where a well dressed couple waited by the door. "Some of the things you said, it sounded like..."

"I don’t hate him," Vegard assured her. "I just was yelling at him because he was going through the assorted chocolates using his, what is it in English, his omniscience to pick out all the raspberry creams." 

Her face changed then, but the man in the door beckoned to her, and she waved uncertainly and went back into the restaurant. Vegard waved back, and got onto his bicycle. Riding through the damp streets, he savoured the wind on his face, the smell of the air, and the working of his muscles, which without a trace of weariness took him all the way home.

***

The prank had been wildly successful. There had been two sets of goody bags. The kids who came trick-or-treating alone got treats from Bag A, chocolate and fruit and bags of assorted candy. The kids who came with their parents got treats from Bag B. And then of course Bag A, the fun stuff, afterwards, but those moments when the parents watched their kids getting spatulas and D batteries and coffee pods and aloe vera plants were comedy gold. Hallowe’en was a relatively new thing in Norway. They hadn’t gotten that many trick-or-treaters, and only eight had shown up with parents, but even so, Bård thought they would have more than enough footage. The team would spend tomorrow morning going through it and cutting it together, before the show aired that night. Not a lot of lead time, but he had faith.

Now, though, it was home to change and scoop up Maria and make sure Sofie was all set to look after Nora and Jens, and then back out for the TVNorge costume party. They took the bus so that neither of them needed to worry about having a couple of drinks. Side by side they sat, holding hands like a couple of teenagers, Maria in her sapphire blue dress with the butterfly masque and faux white rabbit fur wrap, and Bård in his toga and laurels and right now coat and longjohns because it was the bloody end of October.

Maria rested her head on his shoulder, and he found himself beaming, proud to be seen in public with her, proud to--just for a moment--have people see _this_ side of him, the person that he’d always wanted to be, before showbiz as a vocation had even occurred to him. "Will Vegard and Helene be there?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Think she’ll get him into a costume?"

Vegard had never been a Hallowe’en person, but you could dress him as anything and he would bear it. "They’re going as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask," Bård grinned. 

"Hmmm," Maria said. Then: "Does he have the face for Tuxedo Mask? I guess he can always slick his hair back or do a little ponytail or something, but he’s got those round cheeks, and I always thought Tuxedo Mask was a bit angular."

"We’ll find out," Bård said with a shrug.

They got off at the Nydalen stop, and walked arm-in-arm to the studio. Maria leaned close to him, and he put an arm around her. She turned her masqued face up to him and murmured, "Is it true, what they say about Hallowe’en? That the line between this world and the...other one becomes thin?"

"Yes and no," he said. "The world stays the same. But according to the Nordvest Magifolkene calendar the new year starts tomorrow, and the glamour spells renew at midnight. If there’s a localized glitch you’ll see what I see with my contacts."

"That would be nice," she sighed. 

He toyed with a strand of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. "I was saying to Vegard the other day, we should just get you some of your own contacts."

She frowned, and twitched the strand of hair back out from behind her ear. "I’ve thought about it--it would be nice to carry on a real conversation with Lindy--but it seems like this stuff makes _your_ life more complicated, and I’m happy just as I am."

"Well then," he said, "we’ll leave just before midnight, and walk a little, and see what we can see."

She grinned. "Is it terribly likely that we’ll see anyone out at midnight?"

"It’s New Year’s Eve. Of course people will be out. Mostly the scary ones, because the lios alfar tend to have really posh parties. Mel and Jess got the cousins invited to one."

She stopped short. "Wait. So they change the glamour spells over on a night when they know people are going to be out celebrating? _That’s_ smart."

"Yeah. Well...it was a ritual thing. And according to Gisela, one of the first acts debated at the Samkoma in 1970 was a proposal to shift the changeover date to something, anything else, partly because you’re right, it’s ridiculous, and partly because some people thought it would be nice for the spellworkers to have New Year’s Eve off."

Even dawdling, hand in hand, they were nearly at the studio. "It didn’t pass?"

Bård shrugged. "No. People pointed out, the humans are used to this stuff now. Why shift it from the one night where if there _is_ a technical glitch, everyone assumes it’s just a really good costume?"

"And the spellworkers?"

"Mostly old lios alfar. _Very_ big on tradition, and not a lot of interest in being at some fancy elf party minding your manners when you could be out bending light and sculpting shadow." He held the door for her. "After you, Milady."

"Why thank you, good Sir," she said with a curtsey. 

In the foyer, Bård shed his coat and longjohns, and changed into the sandals he’d been carrying with him. He found himself rethinking the Apollo costume; his legs were freezing. Then they wandered into the main reception and Maria pressed his arm, eyes dancing. Looking where she pointed, he saw Helene and Vegard nursing drinks, and all concern for the chill fled as he doubled over with laughter. 

They waited, small smiles on their faces, until he recovered. "You took that in a totally different direction from what I expected," he said, still giggling. "Helene, you look enchanting." He took her hand and dodged her pointy mask to give her a brotherly kiss on the cheek. "Vegard..." He shook his head, and started laughing again. "Nice. But don’t you think you should have shaved your legs?"

" _You_ didn’t," Vegard pointed out. "And I’ll take any insulation I can get. This room is freezing." He frowned at Bård’s legs. "At least I’ve got boots. You’re going to be an icicle."

Maria stood back to look at the brothers. "I just _love_ ," she said, "that you both managed to show up in short skirts and tiaras. I adore that."

Helene laughed so hard that her top hat fell off. "Oh my god, you’re right."

"These are _laurels_ ," Bård corrected majestically. "And a tunic, thankyouverymuch."

Vegard put white-gloved hands behind his back--just above the big red bow--and eyed the women. "And _you_ look like proper masqueraders."

"Madame?" Helene bowed at the waist, extending her hand to Maria with a little flourish. 

Maria curtseyed a little and took her hand, and the sisters-in-law went off to talk of kids and home and plans and projects while they ballroom danced to A-Ha. 

Bård turned to Vegard and doubled over with laughter again. He pulled out his phone. "This..."

Vegard struck a starry-eyed pose, winking and flashing the V-for-Sailor-Venus sign. 

"...is going on Instagram. Perfect. Whose idea?"

"I don’t remember," Vegard said. "It was sort of mutual. A wouldn’t-it-be-funny-if thing that both made us laugh so hard that we had to do it."

Bård nodded his approval, and then his eyes fixed on the opposite side of the room. "They have punch. And shrimp. And Snickers. I’m going for it."

Vegard’s eyes lit up. "Full-size, or..?"

"Fun-size."

"Still," Vegard said with a shrug, and accompanied him over to the table. 

Bård noticed that he was walking a little shakily. "Did you overdo it today?" 

For months after their adventures in Sweden last spring, Vegard had moved through life in a fog of exhaustion. He’d told Bård he blamed the head injury that had landed him in the hospital in the svartalfar city of Varggrav. Bård wasn’t so sure. The blood magic that Dr. Torden had used to treat them had worked so completely that Bård had grown back the front teeth he’d lost in a bike accident as a teen, and had to spend tens of thousands of kroner on dental work to make them look like the old false ones. No, it wasn’t Vegard’s head. Something had happened in the tunnels. Bård had thought about asking flat out, but he hated confrontation, and anyway his brother’s energy had been slowly coming back. Now Vegard said, looking surprised, "What? Not at all; it’s the heels in these boots. I’m all wobbly. What I said the other week, I meant it. I’m fine. Better than fine. Awesome. Ready to go." He grinned as he picked over the chocolate bars until he found a dark one. "The entire Peace Division can come crashing through these doors, and in the name of the moon, I will punish them."

Bård snorted. The punch wasn’t very good. It was weak, and the orange juice was cut-rate. "Yeah? Does your magic work yet?" Upon finding out that magic existed, it had taken Vegard just over twenty-four hours to move from quietly freaking out to learning how to use it. Then he’d taught Bård. Then whatever had taken his get-up-and-go had taken his magic too, and Bård had let his own lapse out of sympathy for months. He’d only just started practicing again.

Now Vegard hummed a note, and a tiny plastic bat that had been suspended from the ceiling dropped into Bård’s cup with a splash. He raised an eyebrow, as if daring Bård.

Bård thought about it, looked all around him, and squinted hard at a point above Vegard’s left shoulder, humming. Vegard took the bait and looked, and Bård sent a thimbleful of miniscule ice chips from the punchbowl down the back of Vegard’s sailor blouse. Vegard yelped, and clamped a hand over his mouth like a naughty child, eyes dancing, when people turned to look. "Oh, good one," he chuckled softly. A minute twitch of a finger sent the laurels slipping down over Bård's eyes, and Bård was about to snap the elastic waistband of Vegard's miniskirt when Calle stepped between them. 

He was dressed as a pirate. He looked from brother to brother as he filled a napkin with shrimp and the cup end of his hook with fun-sized chocolates. "What, are you two like, having a wizard duel or something?"

Bård gave him a smile that was all sunshine and innocence, and Vegard tucked his hands under his arms sheepishly. 

"I was kidding," Calle said. "You... you want me to believe you're actually having a wizard duel."

"A little," Vegard admitted, at the same time that Bård said, "We’d be happy if you wanted to believe something else, too."

Calle started to laugh. "Nice one, guys. Where's the camera?" He turned all around, and meeting each other’s eyes for only a second, they hummed. Vegard gave him a wedgie; Bård nudged the plush parrot velcroed to his shoulder so that its fuzzy beak pecked his ear. 

Calle yelped and leapt back from them, scattering shrimp in all directions. He looked from one to the other with large eyes. Their hands had not moved. 

"We told you about all of this months ago," Vegard said patiently. "We weren’t _lying_."

"But nothing ever came of it," Calle said, still looking from one to the other. He shifted uncomfortably, probably trying to surreptitiously reposition his undies. "Can you use that for the show?" he demanded.

"It would play havoc with the cameras. Besides, I just got it back," Vegard said, swaying a little on his high-heeled boots, "and I am going to _sleep_ tonight."

"Have some chocolate," Bård told him, and started to gather up the shrimp Calle had dropped, so that they didn’t get tracked into the floor.

"Bård, let me do that," Calle said, dropping to a crouch. 

"It was our fault, though."

"Sure, but I’m wearing pants, and even if I wasn’t, I know how to keep my knees together."

"Honestly," Vegard said as he collected a shrimp from the far corner, "it’s not that difficult." The boots betrayed him, and he squawked and fell in a giggling heap.

A bearded giant with a pixie on his arm shambled into the room. He leaned over to kiss the pixie, and then excused himself. "Somebody’s been hitting the punch a little too hard," Magnus observed laconically from inside his Hagrid costume, extending a hand to Vegard. 

Vegard pulled himself up. "Thanks," he said. "I haven’t actually had any."

"They are," Calle said loftily, "having a wizard duel."

For a moment, Magnus beamed like a little kid. Then he composed himself and tut-tutted them, shaking his head. "Yet another sign that international fame has gone to the heads of the Ylvis brothers: rudely blocking off the refreshments table with your sorcery, when as you well know the Norwegian way is to do your duelling quietly in the coatroom. I only wish I had my camera crew here, to document your tragic downfall and warn the Norwegian people of the pitfalls of fame."

"It’s hit or miss," Vegard told him. "Magic causes a lot of interference on standard cameras. In fact, you can work out the kind of magic it is by the type of interference--"

"More to the point," Bård said, "you might want to reconsider antagonizing men who can do...this."

"What?"

"This," Vegard said, gesturing generally in Magnus’ direction. Then he and Bård walked away to find their wives, leaving Magnus looking all around for what they’d done.

As the evening wore on, and Bård watched the parade of bright costumes in front of him, he began to have mixed feelings about promising to take Maria home at midnight. On the one hand, he really wanted her to see what he saw. Of course she believed him, but he still felt an absurd need to prove himself. On the other, it was one thing to light candles and unclog drains by magic in the privacy of one's own home, and quite another to expose his wife to some of Oslo's magical citizens _sans_ glamour. Although the lios alfar and some of the more prosperous svartalfar went among humans with impunity--albeit a few funny ideas sometimes, depending on their levels of exposure--the Underjordiske tended to be warier of humans, and they might not like being treated like a sideshow exhibit. Maybe it would be best not to court trouble. 

He was on the verge of beckoning Maria over and suggesting that if she was having a good time they might as well stay when his phone vibrated. Vegard looked suddenly alert in a way that let Bård know his had too. They checked, and their eyes met. The text showed up as being from ∞∞ ∞∞∞∞∞ and said, "Pardon for the intrusion, but they mean harm."

"Who?" Vegard hissed. His dark eyes scanned the room. "There?"

"That's the programming director and his husband."

"Behind them." 

Bård squinted surreptitiously, and behind a weak spell that whispered _Don't notice us don't notice us nothing to see here_ , a trio swam into focus behind the two men. Maria and Helene were approaching them now, looking curious, and Bård kissed his wife's ear and murmured, "Maria, who do you see in the back corner?"

"Oh! I hadn’t realized there was anyone there. A hunky blond guy dressed as an angel chatting up...sexy Spongebob and sexy Charlie Chaplin. Oh my. Are they all interns? They’re very young."

"They’re elves," Bård said. Spongebob caught him looking. Bård smiled, and raised his cup of punch. The elf looked shocked, and leaned in, whispering with her fellows. "We have to get out of here."

"We can't just run off leave them here with these people," Helene protested in a low voice. "Tell us what to do and we'll do it."

"You and Maria stay here," Vegard said. "They'll follow us. They're here for us." Without waiting for an answer, the two men started threading their way through the partygoers to the exit. 

"They following?" Bård hissed. 

Vegard glanced over his shoulder. "Yeah. I'm beginning to regret these boots."

"Are those what you wore here?"

"God no." 

They slipped past a band of new arrivals into the foyer, where Bård threw his coat and shoes on and tried to gauge the time it would take him to change into longjohns. Dare he? Vegard had pulled off one boot and was hopping around trying to put on something sensible.

The angel, Spongebob, and Charlie Chaplin slipped in and stood, crowding them, arms folded. 

"We don't want any trouble," Bård said, automatically stepping in to shield Vegard while his brother struggled with his footwear, and holding up his hands in a placating gesture that he was aware the longjohns draped over his arm made a little ridiculous.

"If you didn't want any trouble, you should have left us alone," Spongebob shot back. 

"Yeah," said the angel. "This is the night for securing the borders. Everything in its place. If you get in our space--and if you keep encouraging those bloody svarts to get in our space--then you better believe we're gonna get in yours."

Charlie Chaplin smiled unpleasantly. "Think of this as the Bright Court sending a little message to start the new year off right. Maybe their hands are officially tied, but I bet we can wipe the smiles off those pretty faces." She opened her hands in front of her and blew gently on them, and they erupted into blue flame.

Bård backpedalled and nearly tripped over Vegard, who, newly shod, thrust his brother behind him. "You don't want to do this," Vegard said rapidly.

"Or what, you'll toast me? In front of all these humans?"

"We did our research," the angel said. "You don't use magic in front of the humans. It's all cheap sleight-of-hand."

"It's not _cheap_ ," Vegard spluttered.

"He means you're young," Bård said. "Even if you think you're scoring points with someone, you'd go to jail at least. For assaulting innocent men."

A tongue of flame licked out, and Vegard leaned back to avoid it. "Just because the law agreed not to touch you doesn't mean you're innocent," Charlie Chaplin hissed. She stepped forward, and Bård reacted a fraction of a second quicker, pulling Vegard back before the elf could singe more than the bow on the front of his chest. The brothers exchanged a look of consternation. Neither of them was willing to hurt anyone, but even when they weren't rusty their magic had never been as good as people seemed to believe, and she was pulling no punches. 

She yelped and dropped suddenly, rubbing the back of her head. Behind her, Maria brandished a high heel. "Get away from my husband, you little tramp."

Spongebob turned, and drew back an arm. Helene was behind her, and she seized first one wrist, then the other. The angel snarled, and pulled back a fist. Helene sang a note and gestured with her chin, and a scarf snaked off a hanger and wound around his wrist. 

Vegard’s jaw dropped, and his eyes lit up. "Helene!"

"Go go _go!_ " she thundered, and she shoved Spongebob against the angel, buying them enough time to run out into the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Triumph's "Magic Power" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXZLsMxFXf4


	3. Passing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The funk of forty thousand years / The Doppel gang / How to blend in with humans #1: therapy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't seen it already, please check out the awesome cover art that hexa-flexa-flouride made, now posted to the first page! (And then check out his other wonderful drawings at http://hexa-flexa-flouride.tumblr.com/.)

Outside, the four of them ran past low darkened office buildings and balconied apartments, and then through treed parkland, until they reached Moldegata. There they slowed to a walk, keeping to the shadows.

Bård found himself walking next to Helene. "I thought you and the elves were good now," she whispered, darting furtive glances back the way they'd come.

" _Officially_ we're good," Bård said, "but we're not very popular. We got turned into a sort of political football--a little back in 2007, without knowing it, for what we did to that elf-lord, and a lot last March--"

"For recapturing Fenrir after that fanatic set him free? I would have thought the response to saving the world would be fairly bipartisan."

They dodged across a roundabout. Now they were on Stavangergata, keeping to the median, where the trees provided nominal cover and the elves would have to cross the road to get to them. "'That fanatic' was a successful politician who would probably be the frontrunner for First Magister now if we hadn’t put him away. And he managed to convince the Bright Court we were super-powerful terrorists. Things died down after he went to jail, but for the past little while it's been looking like any goodwill we got from helping save the world is wearing thin." Bård smirked a little, then, thinking of the headline he'd seen on the Fae newspaper _The Alpha Chronicle_ two days ago: "LAWLESS: Experts Predict Untrained Human Mages Could Cause a THIRD of All Violent Crime." He was sure if he'd opened it up he'd see a hilariously misinterpreted screenshot from their show (not to mention either dubious use of numbers, or merely dubious experts), but that would have meant buying a paper, and he wasn't going to give Alpha his money. 

"No kidding," Helene said sourly. After another glance back, she quickened her pace, and motioned for the others to do the same. "Here they come."

"But listen… back there," Bård said as he and Helene and Maria jogged along the median. "What you did. Who... how did you learn to do that?"

She shrugged. "There’s a book in the bathroom."

"But the person who taught Vegard said you need to have had magic used on you."

"Yeah. Vegard has a friend who linked our dreams for us when you two were in Sweden."

"And there’s a whole cognitive leap thing--"

"You may have noticed, your brother is _very_ good at explaining things."

Vegard hazarded a dash across Jutulveien, beckoning at them to follow, and then straddled the chain link fence. He waited for them, dark eyes wide and serious. "But please, please, please, Helene," he whispered, "don't do it where they can see. We don’t need them deciding we’re both a threat."

"Right. Sorry." 

"Don't be sorry!" Maria hissed, giving her a little swat. "You saved their lives. Vegard, I can see up your skirt. Cover your shame, will you?"

Vegard adjusted his position a little, and retorted, "How am I supposed to do that, when I'm stuck here and he's over there?"

"I'm not the one with a persistent habit of indecent climbing," Bård pointed out. 

"Not yet, you aren't," Vegard murmured, looking behind him, "but this is Nordre Gravlund, and I think it's our best chance to lose them." He threw his other leg over the fence, and dropped neatly to the ground. "Okay, come on over."

Bård stepped back and motioned the women to the fence.

"No, you first," Maria said. When he started to protest, she said, "You're wearing white. We'll be less visible. Go on." She leered. "I'll stand here enjoying the view."

Bård hopped the fence, and then Maria, with her voluminous dress, and then Helene, the only one of the party wearing pants. 

Paths ran among the graves, but they ignored these, walking across the grass, keeping to the shadows of trees whenever they could, heading straight for the centre.

"It's not _fair_ ," Vegard sighed, hugging his bare arms. "We didn't do anything."

Helene took off her suit jacket and wrapped it around his shoulders. Maria and Bård huddled together for warmth. He had his jacket, but she’d come out in just her faux fur wrap.

The graveyard was a large one, and it took them a good few minutes to traverse, especially in the dark, away from the paths. The only noises were faint traffic sounds and distant party music. They had to have lost the elves by now…

"We'll get to the entrance, wait there, and when a tram comes, we pounce," Bård said. 

"Sounds good," Helene said.

"Yeah."

But as they approached the main gate, Maria stopped short and put a hand on Bård's arm, and motioned the others into stillness and silence behind her. She gestured at three figures just inside the gates.

Vegard had probably been trying to slowly back away, but in a park filled with low obstacles that was a very bad idea. The elves turned at his yelp, and started forward. Maria practically dragged Helene into a run while Bård helped Vegard get back on his feet. 

The elves caught up to them at a hedge as they tried to scramble over. Helene made it; Maria's dress caught; Bård threw a leg over and got twigs where twigs ought not to be got; and Vegard grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back over. 

"Why are you doing this?" Vegard demanded. "We didn't do anything."

"We don't want to hurt anyone," Bård added. 

Spongebob looked incredulous. Her voice rose high over the strains of party music, which had gotten louder the deeper they'd gotten into the cemetery. "You crack glamour, you threaten to bring the humans and their nukes down on all of us, you frame anyone the svarts disagree with with attempted murder, and you expect us to believe that you don't want to hurt anyone?"

" _Huh?_ " The brothers exchanged looks of naked bewilderment. 

"Where is this even coming from?" Bård demanded. "Who's telling you this?"

"Because whoever it is," Vegard put in, "they're really wrong."

The angel shook his head, and advanced on them.

He staggered, and stopped. A grey hand, flesh in tatters, had burst through the soil and seized his ankle. The noise he made was vaguely operatic.

Bård started forward, but the elf yelped and cowered away from him, and Spongebob got between them protectively while Charlie Chaplin was bent at the waist, one hand cupping the spot where Maria had clouted her and the other tugging ineffectually at the angel's calf. 

A hand gripped Bård's elbow, and he gasped, but it was Vegard, who pointed wordlessly to the ground all around them. The music was very near now. And the earth was moving as lean, pale, ragged forms clawed their way up to the surface.

Helene, backing away, tripped over a low gravestone. Arms shot out of the earth and arrested her fall. They let her gently down, and she scrambled to her feet. 

Shambling and lurching, the things converged on the humans and the elves. They wore the remains of old clothes, but their proportions were subtly different, torsos and arms longer, legs shorter, in ways that suggested they had never been human. There was something odd about their shuffling steps, too. It suggested…something. 

"Ideas?" Bård whispered. 

"There’s only one person who can get us out of this," Vegard said grimly.

"Brynjar?"

"Two people," Vegard amended. "Probably." He met Bård’s eyes, and grinned. "I was thinking Thea. Look, Bård: they're walking in unison. That one over there is pointing at us and bobbing his head to the music."

They glanced at each other--their colleagues had been known to remark that they were almost telepathic, unaware that there was no almost about it--and then, as one, turned their backs on the monsters, hands on hips. Three steps forward in time to the music, with a little swagger. Jazz hands. Turn, and my god all those music videos were right: the zombies were following the brothers’ lead-3-4 and slide to the left, clap, three steps forward in formation and the elves were hightailing it out of the graveyard. The zombies, mercifully, let them go. And then Vegard’s eyes widened, and he broke formation and ran after them.

Bård tossed the others a look of mystification, and ran after him.

When he caught up to Vegard, the elves were back on the street and had slowed to a walk, but they were huddled together, still moving fast. "We’re going, we’re going," the angel said over his shoulder. "You won, okay?" He muttered something else about necromancers with no honour. 

"No, no, it’s just, get your Charlie Chaplin friend to a hospital, all right?"

Spongebob turned, her face contorted by anger. "What did you do to her?"

"What did he do to me?" Charlie Chaplin whimpered, feeling the back of her head.

"Easy, easy," Vegard said. "Just, my sister-in-law gave you a good knock on the head earlier. You should get it checked out."

"She’s fine," the angel said crossly. "She’s up, she’s fine."

"My brother’s speaking from experience," Bård said. "Look, I don’t appreciate you threatening our wives and our co-workers, but I don’t think your friend deserves the kind of thing that could end up happening if you don’t get her looked at."

"Whatever," Spongebob said acidly, and they all turned away.

As the brothers walked back to where the others waited, Vegard said, "Do you think she’ll go?"

Bård shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. I hope they do if she starts feeling or acting strange. But we did our duty."

"We did our duty," Vegard echoed with a sigh as he re-entered the graveyard. "They’re so young."

"Young and certain," agreed one of the zombies, who was perched on the fence, legs dangling. She wore the remains of a pink dress, and spoke with a Rogaland dialect. "Ours are the same way. And it’s no good telling them it’s never that simple. They have to find out for themselves."

"Thank you for your help," Bård told her. "You came just in the nick of time."

She threw up her hands good-naturedly. " _I_ had nothing to do with this. But from the sounds of things you helped make somebody’s day."

When they got back to their wives, most of the zombies had gone--not all back to their graves, apparently, because here and there under the trees there were clusters of ragged forms passing bottles around, and in one of the corners there was a cloud of blue smoke that smelled suspiciously like burning rope. A few hung around, sitting crosslegged on the grass between tombstones. One had what must be a speaker of sorts, a glowing ball in a cage, and the party music was coming from this. They greeted the brothers with cheers. One held his rotting paws high, for a high-five from each of them. It wasn’t so bad--spongey, but dry at least. " _That_ ," he said, "was _awesome_." 

"I have always wanted to get humans to do that," another enthused. "I never thought I’d actually have the chance."

"Well, it’s an unlikely combination," another, a woman, pointed out. She wore rags that might have been jeans and a colourful top in better days. "You need humans who can dance and have the cultural knowledge, and you need them to be just brave enough and silly enough to try it."

"Brave and silly--that's these two," Helene said fondly.

"Is this a New Year celebration?" Maria ventured.

"It is," said one of the younger ones, who appeared to be wearing a vest made of lichen. 

"Are... you...?"

"Ghouls," said one of them. "Normally the party's underground, but we heard a commotion." He wore a thin blue tie and glasses, and a thick mossy beard, but the rest of his decaying frame was unclad. He raised his arms, which were practically skeletal. "These are our Samhain Eve glamours."

Maria stood up, hugging herself. "I don't know about the rest of you, but as grateful as I am, I'm freezing and I want to get indoors." 

"We can find blankets," the colourful ghoul offered. "I don't think you'd much like what we've got on tap, but you're welcome to celebrate with us."

"Thank you," Bård said. "We're honoured to be asked--"

"And of course thank you for saving us," Vegard put in.

"--yes, thank you for saving us. But the elves chased us out of a party. We should probably get back before anyone gets alarmed."

The one with the blue tie might have looked a touch relieved, but it was hard to gauge the facial expressions of someone wearing the undead. "Of course, of course," said the one with the lichen vest, sounding a little disappointed. "Before you go, can we take a selfie?"

They grinned, and flashed peace signs for the ghoul's camera. "Dude," the one with the blue tie said, pulling back. 

The colourful one clucked the remains of her tongue, and gently covered Bård's fingers with her own. "I've never understood quite what that means to humans, but it's…not nice here."

"Oh," Vegard said, putting his own fingers down in a hurry. "Sorry."

"To us it means peace," Bård offered, and the ghouls looked at each other and snickered.

They always did a few pictures, so that one would be bound to turn out. And then the colourful ghoul wanted to know if she could get a picture with the wives too. Then there were thanks all around, and the brothers and their wives walked back through a cemetery that was a lot livelier than it had been.

Outside of the graveyard, the night was quiet. It wasn't quite midnight yet, but traffic was sparse, audible mainly as a muted susurrus in the distance. "Well," Maria said as they exited through the main gate, "that was all kinds of terrifying."

"Is that typical?" Helene demanded. "Those three weeks you were away in March, that's the sort of thing you were doing?"

"Not really," said Vegard, at the same time that Bård said, "Basically yes."

Helene pulled Vegard to a stop beside her, and smiled at him, intertwining her fingers with his own. "Zombies all around us, and you _danced_."

He shrugged and made a little aw-shucks gesture, beaming from ear to ear as he started to walk again. "They were ghouls, though."

Bård and Maria shared a look. Under the street lights, with her mask askew and her cheeks flushed and her blonde hair in disarray, she was radiantly beautiful. He realized, with a pang, that her dress was ruined. "Are we really going back to the party?" 

"I left my purse and my coat," she said. "And I am not going home without them. Or your pants."

"My boots are rentals," Vegard said. He opened the tuxedo jacket he’d borrowed from Helene and peeked down ruefully at the front of his singed, snagged, dirty costume. "I don't think I want to end up replacing more than I absolutely have to."

"But how are we going to explain coming back covered in dirt with our clothes all ripped?"

"Easy," Helene said with a grin. "You and Maria go in first, cooing at each other and holding hands and grinning ear to ear and just generally looking like cats that have gotten into the cream. Vegard and I will give you five minutes, and then we'll come in doing the same, and everyone will think that the couples just went to have some fun outdoors."

"At the end of October?" Bård said. "It's pretty far-fetched."

"As far-fetched as chasing off a bunch of elves with the help of dancing zombies?" Maria said archly.

"Ghouls," Vegard corrected. "Also, cats are mainly lactose intolerant. Looking like cats that got into the cream would involve explosive diarrhea, and that's not something I can manage on short notice."

"Give me a glass of milk and a couple of hours," Bård offered brightly.

Helene rolled her eyes. "We can leave that part out, then." 

Months later, when snow covered the ground and the day was just a sliver of light carved out of the darkness and the winter had chewed him up in its icy gears, Bård Ylvisåker would sit in his office, alone, and remember this night, Hallowe’en, Samhain Eve, New Year’s Eve. It had been the last good night, he would think to himself, a night when they were all together and whole and laughing. And he would wonder if he would ever feel that good again.

***

"It’s good," Finn Weber said, looking at his hands instead of the people around him. "Melly’s two months along now. In nine days it'll be… as long as the last one lasted. No problems so far. Work is going well. It’s funny... it seems hard to say this stuff. Scary. Probably it's to do with what we talked about before, the, the general climate, and that actually makes me feel a little better, for it to be not just me. But I've been worried, like if I say it’s good, I’m going to jinx it and everything will come crashing down. Even though Vegard says--"

"Screw Vegard," snapped Ida, a raven-maned middle-aged woman who looked nothing like Erna Solberg anymore. "You don’t owe him anything."

"Ida," said the facilitator, warningly. Her name was Anna, and she’d been a replacement for a farmer’s wife sometime in the seventeenth century. "We’ve talked about this. Not everyone is going to have the same relationship with your original that you do."

"But he doesn’t owe him anything," Ida maintained.

Finn and Brynjar had been commissioned by Melantha and her sister Jessalyn, who had needed Bård and Vegard to do them a favour and hoped that changelings would keep their absence from being noticed. But the fact of the matter was, Helene and Maria were much smarter women than the elves had given them credit for, and besides, when you loved a man enough to spend an entire afternoon getting monkey poo out of his favourite shirt, it was hard not to notice when someone replaced him with an impostor. It certainly hadn't helped that some error in the process had given the Bård clone some of Vegard's mannerisms, and vice versa. Helene and Maria had spotted the fakes right away. They'd renamed the changelings Finn and Brynjar, after characters their husbands had played, and sent them off to help Bård and Vegard. 

As far as the wives had known at the time, a name was just a name, a way of distinguishing the changelings from their husbands. But a component of the magic that had given them life had also directed them to become what people thought they were. This had been supposed to make them more like Bård and Vegard; instead, it had made them more like Brynjar Kvam and Finn Weber. Brynjar had had very little choice in the matter: when he'd gotten in the way of an attempt to kill the brothers, his grievously injured brain had rebuilt itself in the image of Brynjar Kvam--and more besides, but thinking about that made Finn break into a cold sweat, so he tried not to. Finn had fared better physically, but he'd had to deal with the encroaching personality of Finn Weber. He hadn't _liked_ Finn Weber. He'd fought back, and managed to stave off the worst of Finn's douchebaggery, although it was hard to tell where the character's loneliness and disconnection ended and Finn's own woundedness began. 

Only Bård didn't know, and none of the other three had any intention of telling him, that their last adventure in the tunnels of Varggrav had nearly killed Finn. Vegard had used blood magic, illegal and costly, to heal him and to transform both changelings into humans, freeing them from the compulsions that had driven them to obey orders and bend to others' expectations. 

Thus liberated, Finn had set about turning himself into who he wanted to be. No chinos and collared dress shirts for this Finn. He had a fondness for red. Happily--unlike Vegard, who had appeared on national television wearing stripes with plaid twice before Helene put her foot down--Finn also had fashion sense, and if he had a taste for the mildly outlandish even by faerie standards, he made it look _good_. 

He and Brynjar were slated to host their own talk show this spring, the satirical news program _News from Nobody_. They'd gotten the chance to do a special earlier in the fall because they were duplicates of Ylvis, and because their co-host Jessalyn and Finn's girlfriend Melantha were the daughters of an elf-lord, and even if Lord Linnael Aruviel had been disgraced and imprisoned for his role in the plot that Bård and Vegard had exposed, the girls' connections and wealth and obvious disdain for their father's politics had helped a lot. They'd spun the special into a full show, though, by being funny and topical and unflinching, and by--it was kind of sad, really--having better fact-checking than the completely serious news on the competing Alpha network. 

Finn devoured books. He carved. He drew. He was gentle, principled, generous, and a man of his word. 

He was still neurotic as hell, but, he reasoned, you couldn't make an omelet without questioning your entire bloody existence. 

"Vegard and Bård are my friends," Finn told the group, "and a lot of the time what they say makes sense. And Vegard says it’s physically impossible to jinx it that way, but if I keep on like this and nothing happens, then I will have taken this moment that should be really wonderful and beautiful and, like, poisoned it with my fear."

"Yeah!" cried Zweinar. Finn had never figured out why elves would have wanted a copy of Einar Tørnquist, but Zweinar had never volunteered the information, and to ask Vegard or Bård would break the group's rules. There he was, though, and Finn suspected that he would make a good friend. "If you ask me, he’s smart. I mean, we already talked about all this pervasive fear, and he's right, it _does_ poison everything. There are no guarantees, ever, so when you have a chance at joy, you go for it."

"He’s allowed to feel his feelings, too, though," lisped Mr. Sniffles, curling his tail around his paws. Sniffles had been changed in the 1950s, back when this process had been cheap and unscientific and a lot easier to keep secret--enough that some elf lord had used it to duplicate his favourite dog. 

"Thanks," Finn said. "These are all good points. Thank you. I'll think about them. Thank you." And then they moved on.

***

The group was Finn’s compromise, his middle way. He’d spent the second and third months of his life trying to work up the nerve to move out of the rented house that he shared with Melantha and strike off on his own for awhile. Not because he didn’t love her--he did, oh he did--but because even amidst his fear and self-doubt, there was a small part of him that acknowledged that she might not be exactly good for him at this stage of his development. He had the body and knowledge and weird secondhand memories (albeit, with better cinematography than most memories) of a thirty-seven-year-old man, but he’d been alive for a ridiculously short time, and he saw the potential for lovely, strong Melantha, all unknowing, to warp him to her. He needed her, and she didn’t need anyone, and his implants (and Brynjar, and Bård, and Vegard, and Helene, and Maria, and Jess) told him that that kind of relationship was a bad one. So he’d made arrangements to share living space with Brynjar for a little while until he got on his feet, and been rehearsing the conversation inside of his head, and got about seventy percent of the way to the point where he thought she might not hate him forever for it.

When she’d told him that she was pregnant, he’d felt a great guilty wave of relief that he wouldn’t have to leave just yet, and probably by the time it would stop being bad form, they would be thoroughly done with each other. And then she’d miscarried, and everything else stopped mattering for a little while. Finn had heard of the loss of a pregnancy ending even good solid relationships, and there was no question that it had destroyed them both. But what emerged, what grew back... was not what it had been. Too simple, to say that Melantha had needed him, and that fixed everything; or that having caused her pain once, he had no wish to again. It was more than need and more than guilt; it had changed him too, shaken him to his core. He would not leave. But he did put out quiet feelers, until he found a support group for people like him. 

It had been difficult. The personhood of changelings was a fuzzy area. If they were in fact people, under the SULA Act of 2007 it would be illegal to use the standard complement of compulsion spells on them. But liberating them with the blood of the people they’d been modelled on had itself been banned shortly thereafter, amid fears that upstart changelings would take matters into their own hands, settling for the lower efficacy of blood unwillingly given. Vegard and Bård had been granted amnesty for the various magical crimes that they’d (mostly inadvertently) committed while running from the trumped-up charges of the Peace Division, but in theory Vegard could go to Innilokun Ríki, the prison realm, for what he’d done for Finn and Brynjar.

Last year, the Samkoma had resolved the thorny ethical questions by ruling that the complicated infusion process used to create changelings _also_ counted as blood magic, and was therefore illegal. Finn understood that there was an argument that these sorts of laws were there to prevent the exploitation of people like him--like he'd been, but he wasn't sure that being an illegal person was much easier than being a non-person. If anyone found out, about any of them…well, who knew what would happen? He'd heard of, and experienced for himself, people finding out and carefully looking the other way. But he'd also heard of changelings, some liberated and some not, being refused medical treatment, denied housing, and having their standing applications delayed indefinitely. There were horror stories coming out of the Peace Division, because the laws were such that changelings who were involved in, suspected of, or witnesses to crimes could be impounded like objects, rather than arrested like people. They didn't have rights that protected them against the overzealous use of police powers, and there were rumours going around that when a crime took place, the Peace Division would scour the area for changelings, so that they could collect witnesses without having to worry about pesky things like rights and due process. A changeling's best hope was to pass, so his support group was necessarily very careful.

Some of them were exactly like him, changelings liberated with the blood of an original. Some back before it had been made illegal, probably, but it was another thing that was not okay to ask. They didn't often talk about it, but you could just sort of tell who was carrying sap and who wasn't. Anna, he was pretty sure, had been liberated with blood that was not freely given, but she had never said anything. Sniffles and Zweinar were still bound. Well--liberating Sniffles would be impossible, because a person didn't have the right kind of blood, and a dog couldn't give blood freely. And Ida was a tough case; Finn figured she'd been made of something different, and animated with a nonstandard set of spells. You didn't ask, though, and they’d all taken an oath saying that if someone mentioned it in group, it stayed in group. 

With the oath, Finn felt free to talk about the guilt that was a large part of his life. Vegard hadn’t known what he was doing--well, neither had Finn, properly, although he’d still tried to talk Vegard out of it. And it wasn’t just about breaking the law; Vegard had liberated Brynjar afterward, not understanding why you just didn’t do that sort of thing, and the energy for two transformations had to come from _somewhere_. With everything Finn knew now, he understood that it was a miracle that Vegard had even survived. For the last six months he’d wandered around in an exhausted haze that was only now just lifting. And the worst of it was, Finn had discovered last week that Vegard hadn’t understood _why_. 

Horrified, Finn had explained. And Vegard had been okay with it. That was Vegard, for you. He’d decided long ago what was the right thing to do, and no matter what it did to him, he'd never wavered. 

The meeting wound up, and Anna invited them to come to the one next week, in the back of the little-used grimoire shop at the edge of Ekeberg. Finn was headed out through the front doors, still knotting his scarf, when Ida touched his elbow. "Sniffles and I are going to grab a hot chocolate, if you're in."

He was poised between saying fine, he had nothing better to do, and politely refusing and seeing what Zweinar was doing, because the man seemed like a pretty cool guy and Finn didn't want him to feel left out, when he saw, through the glass doors, a figure silhouetted against the streetlights. Brynjar's grey ankle-length duster and dark blond mane blew wildly in the autumn wind. He held a walking stick that Finn had carved himself, to support a leg that was still a little weak from time to time.

"Sorry," Finn told Ida, "my brother is here to pick me up."

"You should ask him to join us sometime," Sniffles said, getting up on his hind legs and putting a paw on Finn's calf. "He smells lonely."

"I keep inviting him," Finn sighed, and they parted ways. 

On the sidewalk, Brynjar clasped his arm. "How were your group?" It was the only question he would ask. Brynjar didn't pry. He didn't have to; he could see everything, of course, but lately he'd also been getting a lot better about not blurting stuff out. Finn got the idea that he was trying to develop something of a social life, and had finally put together that that sort of behaviour was frowned upon.

"It was good," Finn said. "I thought you were going home." 

"I has business in the city later tonight." They started to walk, Finn with his hands folded behind him, Brynjar with his stick tap-tapping on the ground. He must be tired, because he was leaning on it a bit. "For the moment, I are unsettled, Finn. I seeks my brother."

"You too?" Finn was about to add that they'd talked about it at the beginning of the meeting, a sense of unfocused foreboding that it turned out every one of them shared, but he decided it might break confidentiality. Instead he said, "I've been feeling this sense of… doom. I thought it was just, like, part of the background radiation of being human, but it's been getting stronger."

Brynjar nodded vigorously. "Yes, yes, something that have been in the background a long time, that have just now breaked the surface of consciousness. I were wondering about it on my way home today. And then I notices…" He pulled a tabloid-style newspaper from one of the inner pockets of the duster.

Finn took the paper, and read. "'YLVIS MENACE: Dissolution Darlings Mob Terrified Teens'? Jesus and Balder, is this about last night? 'Samhain Night… three students from Dýranblað Academy... chased into a graveyard... escaped with minor injuries…' That's not what happened!" He hadn't been there of course; he'd been with Brynjar and Melantha and Jessalyn at Lady Orviel's, trying to pretend to the rest of the partygoers that Brynjar had just had a little too much to drink and was hanging out in the corner, and was not in fact reciting a play-by-play, his newscaster sing-song threaded with tension. "They conjured balefire!"

"I remembers the balefire," Brynjar said mildly.

"So the privileged children of the Bright Court's very brightest attack unarmed humans in the middle of a bloody Hallowe'en party, so they have to run away and be rescued, and _The Alpha Chronicle_ spins it so that Bård and Vegard are the ones doing something wrong."

"That are a fair assessmentation, Finn. But look on the bright siding: Melantha's fact-checking becomes easy."

"Ugh. I don't know how people can believe this stuff."

"Because they wants to, Finn. There are, as you say, a great fear in the land, and Alpha help them put faces to it."

Finn kicked at a pebble, savagely. "The wrong ones."

"Then when we take to the airwaves this spring, we shall exposify the right ones, if any such exist. But I suspect it are more complicated than that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Meat Loaf's "The Monster is Loose" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3N4gTvOFOA


	4. Namaste

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to blend in with humans #2: nightlife / Food of the gods (not so great actually) / A spot of turbulence / Encounters with local wildlife

Brynjar Kvam knew a lot of things. He knew his family trees for six generations, and visited them all dutifully even though they did not approve of the considerable body modification he’d undergone. He knew the origins of the universe, the orbits of the planets, and the number of licks it took to get to the Tootsie Roll centre of a Tootsie Pop (one hundred and fifty-seven). He could look at a person and see her history, her soul, her talents, her deepest fears and fondest wishes. He could drive a stick shift, dress a wound, cast six kinds of blessings, speak fourteen languages fluently, give an absolutely breathtaking massage, summon the first five chapters of _Birkbeck's Pandemonium_ , play sixteen musical instruments and three sports, write code in five different programming languages, recite the Eddas from memory, make a passable roux, and ice a largish cake. 

He still did not know why he couldn’t get a date. 

The club was called Jæger, and it was downtown, at Grensen 9. One of the rooms had a trance DJ tonight, with coloured lights playing across the low ceiling and scattering through the room, and although Brynjar enjoyed the music, he'd checked his walking stick at the door along with his duster and sweater, and he didn't quite trust his slightly weak left leg amidst a dancing crowd. He wove his way into the other room, where there were chairs and a few tables at the edge, and the DJ was playing something ambient. 

After walking Finn to the house he shared with Melantha, and having a cup of coffee with both of them, he had begged the use of their bathroom to get ready for tonight. His long honey-blond hair was in a bun now, and he wore guyliner, skinny jeans, and a lavender tank top. He’d glammed a tattoo of the runes Ehwaz and Wunjo between his shoulder blades.

He turned his gaze to a woman who was standing by the bar with her friends. Welder. Brighter than average. Human. One cat. White. Father deceased, mother remarried, four brothers. Last serious relationship three years ago. Nominally Church of Norway. Hadn’t been since two Easters ago. Unduly sensitive about her weight, which he was learning to ignore because it was virtually universal and a touchy subject. Fiercely loyal. Fretting about being forty and still waiting for her life to start. And of course her soul was radiantly beautiful. They all were, in a way that he tried not to look at too hard, because he’d learned that people were very suspicious when you fell helplessly in love with them at first sight. 

He caught her eye, and smiled. She started to smile back, and then her eyes widened, and she looked away in a hurry. 

Bloody hell.

Assistant librarian. Twenty-seven. Getting over a bad breakup with an emotionally abusive jerk. Brilliant. Brown. Using a wheelchair. Agnostic. Non-binary. A touch goth. Parents divorced and remarried. Stepmother insufferable. Huge crush on Neil Gaiman. Brynjar smiled, across the room, and the smile was returned, but then the other looked up, and beamed at someone who had just come and touched their shoulder. Brynjar smiled to himself, and turned his attention elsewhere.

Secretary. Worked out. White. Twenty-two. Just got a new puppy. Straight. Brynjar looked away before he could be noticed.

He gasped aloud when he saw her walk down the stairs--not for the spill of long dark hair, or her shimmering pale skin, or her perfect dancer's body, but because the grey eye saw in her the same brightness, the same deep-rootedness that he saw in himself. But it was dimmer, fractured. He felt a flood of protectiveness, of indignation at the people who had hurt her. Her body language was confident, but inside she was broken. Well. He wasn't sure how to fix her, but he had to try. 

He caught her eye. She looked back at him levelly, and raised her eyebrows a little. He moved across the room, trying not to limp, until he was in front of her. "Namaste," Brynjar said, pressing his palms together and giving her a little bow. "The god in me greet the god in you."

"I don’t have any god in me," she growled.

Brynjar was aware that the sort of man he was pretending to be would gallantly offer to fix that, and it would be kind of funny, but that sort of remark had effects, not least of which was that he wouldn't be able to live with himself afterward. What he said was, "I sees divinity."

He might as well have gone with being skeevy, for the way she looked at him. Square in the eye. The grey eye. "You see _recovering_ divinity. I’m living clean now. Mortal."

"What? _Why?_ "

She looked at him for another long time. Finally she said, "I don’t owe you or anyone an explanation, but buy me a drink and I’ll tell you." 

Over a rye and Coke--he didn't subscribe to the concept of abominations, but after this he thought he just might--she told him. "I used to be a goddess," she said. "For a little while, I thought I had it all. Adorers. Sacrifices. Well, not big sacrifices, not anymore. Tokens, more like. 

"I met a guy. Nice... sweet. University boy, when we met. He had these big green eyes. A real romantic. I thought. When he asked me to marry him, I was over the moon. He was really specific about the date, though. And then I started seeing posters around. He was running for office, you see, because he thought being with a goddess gave him some kind of right to rule." Her hands tightened on her drink. "I blasted him. Not to death, you understand, but... he's not getting laid anytime soon, not without a lot of help and cooperation, and no one's going to vote for him. And I looked... at that beautiful body that I'd loved and then marred, that beautiful face with its scars-to-be. I should have been satisfied, but I felt hollow. I thought, Is this all there is to my life? Knotted rags and scraps of paper, most of them done ironically now? I left my part of the coast. I shooed the fish away. I hitchhiked to Oslo, and when one of the drivers groped me, I made his hand rot off." She swirled her drink around for a few seconds before setting her mouth and looking back up into his face. "I was angry. I was hurt. I won't lie, I did some terrible things. It was a dark few months. And then I met Váli. He introduced me to the group. They taught me some coping strategies. In time, I was able to contribute strategies of my own."

"Group," Brynjar echoed. "Support group?" 

"A recovery group. I don't think you'd be interested," she said breezily. "You seem pretty attached to the idea of your own godliness."

"As it are attached to me. I did not ask for it, I once tried to have it taken, but it persisteth, and it haves its advantages."

She cocked her head. "If you like these advantages so much, why did you try to get rid of it?"

"My cousin, whom I respect very much, are an atheist. And an opportunity presentified itself, to spend my deity on what I thought a worthwhile thing. But it worked not."

"Your cousin has the right idea," she murmured. "And you could _make_ it work. If you wanted it to. With the proper support. If you were strong and committed and prepared to follow through."

Brynjar shrugged. "I likes my life as it has become."

"We meet tomorrow night at eight," she said. "In the basement of the church on Fritzners Gate. Maybe you'll hear something you like."

"My brother are always telling me the benefits of his own group," Brynjar mused. "I will try. Thank you."

She stood, then, and grabbed the front of his shirt, and bent to give him a long, lingering kiss. "Tomorrow then," she whispered against his parted lips. She left him slumped in the chair, panting, with the taste of rye and Coke on his tongue, as she walked out of the club and into the night.

Brynjar closed his eyes, replaying the feeling. It had felt like a bit of an imposition, but that seemed to be how people conducted themselves here, and it hadn’t hurt him, and she had thought he would enjoy it. Truthfully he didn't think he minded that much. But the grey eye had seen something it didn't like. He could look more closely--distance was no obstacle--but it felt like it would be too far, and unlike her, he hadn’t mastered the art of casually violating people’s boundaries in ways society said was sexy. Instead he promised himself that he would be careful, and closed his eyes, and brought two fingers to his lips.

***

The church was a big modern building in Frogner. The front door was locked, but the side doors were open, and there were people downstairs.

Brynjar had never been in a church basement before, but something deep in his programming registered the smell of the air and confirmed that it was classic church basement. The main room had a pine floor, walls papered with children's drawings of Bible scenes, and a ceiling covered in ductwork. _She_ was there, and six others besides, sitting in a circle of folding chairs in the middle of the room. 

Their eyes were on him now. Brynjar felt a flicker of unease. He was surrounded by broken gods, the divine light that should have been whole and healthy inside of them instead dim and stuttering. He looked for pain, and found, to his surprise, that most of them were reasonably serene about it--happy, even. 

One of the exceptions, a raven-haired beauty with gold-rimmed eyes and her divinity intact but in shackles of patterned darkness and light, raised her eyebrows at him. Oh, now, the grey eye _really_ did not like what it was seeing. "Hi, cutie," she purred. "Haven't I seen you before somewhere?"

"I thinks not," Brynjar said. "Perhaps thou thinkest of my cousin?"

"Leave him alone, Tia," growled a large bearded man. "Be welcome, stranger. There's coffee and cookies on the side table."

Brynjar snagged a coffee and two rainbow chip cookies from the side table. There was an empty chair next to the woman from last night, and he flashed her a smile as he propped up his walking stick and then juggled the cup and the napkin with the cookies on his lap. She smiled back. 

"Well," said the bearded man, "I guess it's eight and we can start. And we have a new person, so let's go around the room and introduce ourselves. Rán, how about we start with you?"

"I'm Rán," said the woman next to Brynjar, smiling at him again.

"Hello, Rán," the others in the room chorused.

Her demeanour, in this room, was different. She was as beautiful as ever, but her body language was awkward and vulnerable, and although she told basically the same story that she had last night, she seemed shy in a way that did strange things to Brynjar's heart.

"My name is Tia," the woman with the gold-rimmed eyes grumbled, arms crossed over her chest, legs jutting out in front of her. "I’m here because of a court order, but I’m perfectly happy as a goddess and I have no intention of changing it."

"I’m Váli," the bearded man said. "My father was a god, and died for it. My brother was a god, and died for it. It was my duty to kill the man who killed him, and I did my duty. Even if his crime was an accident. Even if he was bloody blind. I killed him. And then what? They tell you it's so great to be a god. They tell you you're all-powerful. But the only thing it ever did for me was force me into something I didn't want to do. And all the things I did want to do, I learned I would have to do on my own. I turned away from that life. Found someone I love. Adopted a child. I'm living proof that whatever you were born into, you can change. Even if you have to move Asgard and Midgard to do it."

Brynjar took a sip of coffee. It tasted like they had made it by running it through the engine of a Chevrolet. He bit into his rainbow chip cookie. It didn’t help that much. 

The speaker now was a young-looking man. He had clearly had horns amputated; one had been sanded mostly flat, the bare bone-coloured spot mostly covered by his light brown curls; the other peeked up just a bit. He was one of the exceptions: he wasn't serene; he was in pain. "My name is Dádýrfórn. I was a minor god of the hunt. But, like, the last person to even know my name died five years ago. I’ve just sort of been drifting. And I thought, maybe it’s time to do something new, you know? But... look, I don’t know if being clean is working for me. It hurts. It hurts every day."

"Of course it hurts," Váli snapped. "Your whole being has gotten used to deity. You thought it would be easy to break the habit?"

"I know," Dádýrfórn sighed. Brow knitted in pain, he ran a hand through his hair, his fingers rubbing the horn that had been sanded flat. "It just, it hurts. I don't know if I can do this."

"We've all been there," said a matronly middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, reaching over to pat his knee. "You were strong enough to turn away. I believe you can do this."

Dádýrfórn grimaced and lowered his head, shoulders hunched, hands clenching and unclenching.

"I'm Uksakka," said a beautiful dark-haired Sami woman with elegant, long-fingered hands. "I work with my sisters and my mom. I assign sexes to babies. But lately I've started second-guessing my choices, and...just... The more I learn, the less I'm sure that I'm the one who should be making these decisions."

"I'm Beyla," said the matronly woman. "I had a bit of a reputation back in my goddess days. I didn't mind while I was married, but when he died, I found myself wanting to start fresh. Thank goodness that's over now. I'm living clean. Working in a veterinarian's office. It's good work."

"I'm Nergal," said a leonine black man with serene golden eyes. "I spent a very long time as a god of war. I…liked the way it used to be. The scents of hot iron, and blood, and dust. All those men on the plain, with their muscles gleaming, their shoulders heaving…" He shook his head, face contorting with something like disgust. "War has changed, and I have changed. The nations I served have long since passed away, and the nations that have taken their place do not seek my favour. I mislike the many-tentacled thing that now wears war as one of its faces. I will not serve it. I seek a new start, in a land of warriors who have learned the ways of peace."

Nergal had good points, Brynjar caught himself thinking. But the room had gone awfully silent, and then he realized that they were all looking at him. "Er," he said, "I are Brynjar Kvam."

"Hello, Brynjar Kvam," they chorused back at him, in a way he found very unnerving.

"I are a new god. I are still learning my place and my powers and my will. I know not what I want, but finding others who has shared my experience are a boon, and I give my thanks."

"Are you happy as a god?" Uksakka asked, leaning forward. "Does it work for you?"

Brynjar considered. "I are largely happy as I am."

"Largely?" Váli pressed.

"My family do not approve. Communication have breaked down betwixt us, I fear. I has my cousins, and my dearest brother…" He studied the floor in front of him. The blue eye saw attractive patterns in the pine; the grey one saw, amid countless beetles and some interesting fungus, potsherds and six and a half human skeletons, one of them a little human girl who had died of diphtheria. He hadn't meant to confide in strangers, but he'd been keeping it in for months now, and these people it seemed he could talk to without disturbing the complex connections in his own life. "They are paired. Paired, and I go alone. It are a little thing perhaps. I takes joy in my own company and the company of my familiars. I does not _need_ another to sharing my life or my bed. Perhaps I wouldst not even like it. But I are a curious god, formed in the image of a curious man, and he imaginated me to be married."

Váli shrugged. "Any one of us will tell you, being a god can be a lonely business."

"Formed in whose image?" Rán said, cocking her head.

Brynjar ignored the question. "Maybe it are on me, then, to be lonely, but I wouldst sample the alternatives."

Dádýrfórn was still rubbing the stub of one of his horns. "Women are weird about the god thing. They say they want, like a strong man, but when you show them how strong you are, they freak out."

"Does they say that?" Brynjar asked, mystified.

"I'm sure I never cared about that, dear," Beyla said mildly. 

Tia gave him a smile that was distinctly sharklike. "I like a man who can cry."

"Ignore her," Nergal said kindly. "She wants to like you." 

"Just be yourself, Brynjar," Rán urged, rubbing his upper arm. "You don't have to be a god. Just be you."

He wanted to retort that he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be, if not a god. But Rán seemed at odd moments to like him, and goodness knew he didn't have a lot of other options. He smiled, and shrugged. "I are what I are."

"That's god-talk," Váli muttered darkly.

"That's a little defeatist, isn't it, sweetie?" Beyla said. "You talk about how powerful you are, but it sounds to me like you think you're powerless to change the one thing that matters."

Brynjar chose his words with care, keeping his tone light and respectful. "Might I asking, then, why it should matter?"

Dádýrfórn burst out, "Gods kill! Even when we don't, our followers do. They used to ask me for help with deer-hunting. And I gave it. I'm a _vegan_. I thought helping them was just what I was supposed to do. Now I have a choice."

Beyla shook her grey head in sorrow. "Have you read the Old Testament?" 

"There are so many ways it could go wrong," Uksakka added.

"You carry the weight of the world," Nergal said, his golden eyes sad. "If you don't understand that, you're dangerous. And if you do? Well, I don't envy you."

"The world were doing just fine before me," Brynjar protested. "I are mindful of that. I are respectful, and so careful of the consequences of my acts." He faltered a little, thinking of checking in on Vegard over the summer, finding him asleep in his home studio with his cheek mashed against a keyboard and a tiny thread of drool threatening to short things out unless the phone rang right _now_. "I has made mistakes. I has learned from them."

Váli glared. "At what price, Brynjar Kvam?"

Brynjar met his eyes. "Nothing not agreed to. I has not sought out this power."

"You have not deserved it, either," Nergal rumbled. 

"No," Brynjar agreed. He fell quiet, and looked at his coffee. 

After a long, awkward silence, Dádýrfórn said, plaintively, "So… any tips for managing the pain?" With relief, the others answered. 

Brynjar saw, with the grey eye, that Rán's mind was working furiously. Out of courtesy he looked no further.

***

The flight attendant took forever to show up. Vegard, sitting by the window, smiled his winningest smile at her. "My cousin would like another Merlot, please."

"Of course." She placed a plastic cup over the tiny bottle, and set it on the tray table in front of Finn.

"Thank you," Finn said in a very small voice, and didn't bother with the cup, drinking straight from the bottle.

It would have been better to take the train, but they really couldn't justify it in the middle of their broadcasting season. Brynjar had asked Sleipnir, who had carried the four of them gladly before, but she said that there was a disturbance on the old roads, somewhere to the north, and she didn’t feel quite good about bringing them into its field. So a flight it was, and Vegard was happy to have an excuse. 

They did have to go to Bergen. The Samkoma, the Faerie parliament, had passed laws requiring potential voters to be registered by a grandparent, and as the changelings had technically come from Bård and Vegard, it had been Vegard's reasoning that their own parents would be the closest thing to grandparents. They'd chosen to approach their mum, who had been bemused to be presented with a stack of forms and uncanny duplicates of her two eldest, but had signed everything nonetheless and obligingly come along to Bergen's local sambandsàlfur stjórnskrifstofu and sworn under the Seal of Luotettavuus that yes, she was a rightfully born child of Scandinavian soil and yes, Finn and Brynjar were the flesh of her flesh of her flesh. Then she'd taken all of them home and fed them cake before they'd caught the tram back to the airport. 

Finn gulped down the last of his wine and slumped in his seat. Vegard patted his arm, but didn't say anything. On the way over he'd sat with Brynjar, who had also been nervous, but managing. He'd explained that it wasn't just that they'd never flown before. During the Victory of the Light over a century ago, the lios alfar had sealed their victory by doing something to make the skies extremely dangerous for svartalfar and Underjordiske. The svartalfar, who had been emerging from the tunnels since the Mikillbreyting of the 1840s, were suddenly driven back in, not to emerge _en masse_ until after WWII. Finn's and Brynjar's programming had included all the knowledge their creators thought they might possibly need to survive in the human world and the magical one, and among that knowledge had been a dire warning about air travel. 

Vegard, understanding, had reassured Brynjar by telling him how the plane was working and what the pilot would be doing at each stage and what was happening. But it didn't work with Finn, who had waveringly asked him to change the subject. So Vegard tried to bolster his spirits by telling him about aviation history, about all the crashes that everyone had survived, all the times that something had gone disastrously wrong but the pilot had still managed to land safely. He was in the middle of explaining about the Gimli Glider when Finn let out a little sob, and Vegard was shocked to see tears running down Finn's face. 

"But no, it has a happy ending," Vegard said, hands fluttering in consternation. "Let me just finish the story--"

"Vegard," Finn said carefully, "you have done me a great favour this day, but please shut up."

Vegard had shut up.

Now he gazed out his window at the mountains. They were past Hardangervidda now--he supposed he should be able to pick out familiar bits of it, but probably he was just too high up--and over Telemark. He drew in breath to tell Finn that the day was clear and the view was beautiful if he wanted to look, but instead of speaking, drew in more breath. There was something moving down there. 

Vegard surreptitiously blinked out a contact lens, and closed the other eye. Just mountains. He put the lens back in, and now both eyes saw a sinuous mottled grey shape scrabbling up the mountainside. As he watched, it launched itself off a cliff, and two enormous wings unfurled, catching the air. The thing flapped a bit, ungracefully, until it seemed to catch an updraft and soared. Straight for the plane.

He eased the windowshade down. "So Finn," he said, turning, "what are you reading?"

Finn had taken a newspaper out of the plastic bag he'd acquired at Tanum in the airport in Bergen. "The _Vestkyst Kontratrylleformularen_. It's hard to find a paper copy in Oslo."

The plane bucked, and Finn let out a high, frightened cry. He wasn't alone. The seatbelt lights lit up.

Vegard nudged the windowshade up with his thumb, just enough to see the dark shape keeping pace with the aircraft, and eased it closed again. 

The intercom crackled. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. As you can probably tell, we've run into a bit of turbulence above the mountains. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts." She repeated the instructions in English.

Finn was staring straight ahead, breathing hard. "Finn," Vegard said, putting a hand on his arm. "Finn!" Finn turned toward him with a little whimper. Vegard tried to make his voice soothing. "What's in the paper? Anything good?"

"Um…" Finn unfolded the paper with shaking hands and scanned it, wincing every time the plane shook. "Profiles of the First Magisterial candidates."

"Yeah? Who's running?"

Finn frowned at him, and then the plane bucked again and he clutched at Vegard's shoulder with a yelp. Vegard patted his arm. He hazarded a glance across the aisle to see how Bård and Brynjar were managing. Bård flashed him a long-suffering smile. Brynjar had his face to the window, his hands cupped as if to eliminate glare, although upon reflection this might well be to keep Bård from seeing what was out there. 

"I-I-I was gonna say, how do you not know who the candidates are, but you probably aren't even registered to vote, are you? You don't care about this stuff."

"I care, but I don’t have standing, and I'm not sure I should try to get it, and even if I tried, it's taken you months and months to get yours." 

The plane shook around them, and Finn took a couple of gulping breaths and said, "It's Delphinia Leandriel for the Lavenders, Nils Tistel for the Indigos, and Aurindael Nimarael for the Golds."

"Oh." He had no idea what any of that meant. "Who are you voting for?" 

Another blow rocked the plane. Finn ducked his head, and looked at Vegard with a mixture of terror and incredulity. Vegard, feeling the plane climb a little, kept his face politely attentive. "Lavender," Finn stammered out finally. "I like Tistel personally, but I don't like what the Indigos say about security, and border controls. They're really just b-borrowing the Gold line. Leandriel is talking about repealing the whole Peaceful Haven Act."

"That would be good," Vegard said inanely, as something thudded on top of the plane. There was a shriek like a raptor, then, and suddenly, the shaking stopped.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain again. We had some problems with…well, you could probably hear the wind buffeting us, but we've changed altitude and it looks like things are smoother up here. Expect beverage service to resume shortly."

Vegard looked at Finn's face, reached into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, fished out the little baggie, and passed it over. He was just in time.

***

As they filed off the plane, the pilot stood at the door, wishing people well. Her eyes widened when she saw the brothers. "Mr. Ylvisåker. Mr. Ylvisåker. Thank you for flying with us. I hope the turbulence didn't inconvenience you too much."

Vegard, bringing up the rear, grinned. "It makes things interesting."

In front of him, Finn made a noise that sounded like a cross between a sneeze and a sob, and he clutched the door for support. 

She smiled. "Well, we'll try to make it less interesting next time. Thank you for flying Norwegian, and have yourselves a pleasant day." 

The captain turned, then, and went back into the cockpit. Vegard waited at the doorway for Finn to recover enough to straighten up. It took only a few seconds, but it gave Vegard enough time to hear the captain fling herself into a seat and mutter, "Bloody dragons."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Paul Van Dyk's "If You Want My Love" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7S1ipeDDsw


	5. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of fate and radish roses / How to blend in with humans #3: the date / Assembly of the gods / A crack in the universe / A rough commute

Over the past few weeks, since getting approval on the show, Brynjar's life had fallen into a pattern. He and Finn and Jessalyn spent their days in Jessalyn's home office, writing and planning. There was only so much they could do ahead of time for news-based comedy, but they were able to work out bits, running gags, recurring segments that would help them shape each day. A couple of times now, they'd done dry runs, devoting a day to coming up with comedy based on things that had happened that week. The first time had had flashes of brilliance in a sea of mediocrity. The second time felt better, even though they ended up not using anything. The third time, Jessalyn was cranky, having spent the morning talking to her mother, which made Finn and Brynjar timid, but her wit that day was razor-sharp. They were getting better. 

After work, Brynjar would spend some time in the city, walking the streets, visiting museums and galleries, reading in the libraries, sometimes clubbing when he felt like braving the lights and noise. Finn, for all his nervousness and neuroses--maybe because of them--had fit seamlessly into this world, giving his heart to practically the first adult he met who wasn't either related to him or a wolf, seeking comfort in that support group of his, plunging headfirst into family life. He had a lot of anxiety about certain interactions, but in the moment he was very good with people. Brynjar, on the other hand, felt like personhood was a thing he needed to learn in order to do it properly. He knew he was odd. He saw, with the grey eye, people noticing his oddness, and he tried to do the things that they thought would be normal, but he was always off in ways that he tried in vain to correct for. So between the end of the work day and the drive home to the perpetual summer afternoon of Asgard, he researched and puzzled and observed. What kind of man was he? What kind of god was he? How in the name of either did you strike up a conversation with someone at the grocery store without sounding like a freak?

Finn came back from Jessalyn's kitchen, where he'd been heating up something that looked like macaroni and cheese. He sat down at the desk they shared, and alternated between the mac and cheese and the tomato and cucumber salad he'd brought. "Melly snagged two tickets to Rudresh Mahanthappa, but she’s got an article deadline. You in?"

Brynjar was going to have to do some shopping soon. He'd packed his lunch from the contents of the stasis chamber at Valaskjolf, and he had aspic and some radish roses. These he hid from Finn, who had a thing about root vegetables. "My thank yous, Finn, but I has taken your advice and getted myself into a group."

"Well hey!" Finn said, clapping him on the shoulder. "That’s great!" But Finn’s approval didn’t feel quite as good as he thought it would. "What are they like?"

Brynjar shrugged. "Oh... we has commonalities."

"Gods?"

Brynjar had a sudden sense of weight, as if the course of the future would depend on his answer, but while he saw aspects of the present and the past uncannily well, the future was a mystery to him. He mulled it over, wanting to tell the truth. "It are complicated, Finn." 

Destiny, whatever it was, thunked into place. "Oh," Finn said cheerfully, sucking a grape tomato off his fork. "I'm glad."

***

After work, with Finn gone off to change for his night out and Jessalyn keen to finish some experimental cabinetry spells, Brynjar had a burger at a place downtown called Greasy, wishing that he'd at least proposed dinner before Finn ran off to his show. Or that he'd asked Rán to meet him early. Would it have been weird, to ask her to dinner? Too forward? He wouldn't impose on her, but he was getting heartily sick of dinners alone. There was nothing to do but eavesdrop. He ate at the counter facing the window, amusing himself with shallow glances into the lives of the passers-by. He saw speculations about a celebrity's possible baby bump, three foreigners positively obsessing over Bård, worry about a missing hiker in Jotunheimen, ski weekend plans for nice normal people with lives and partners…

All at once he was fed up, anxious, heartsick. He was tired of lonely autumn nights. He wanted to breathe the sweetness of Asgard's air, and wrestle with Geri and Freki, and think seriously about his place in Midgard, because suddenly he felt like he'd gone badly adrift. 

He finished his last few fries and left. He went to the parking garage where he kept his car, ready to drive home then and there. He would skip the group tonight. Maybe forever. It was good to find more people like himself, but they hadn't seemed pleased with him.

Brynjar pulled his car door closed, and sat. He didn't know why he bothered looking at the darkened church in Frogner. But when he did, nearby, in the little triangular park where three streets came together, he saw Rán. Waiting for him. Hoping he would be there a bit early, because there was something she wanted him to see. 

He could have just seen it, of course, but that would have meant looking a bit deeper into her thoughts than he gathered was strictly polite for a casual acquaintance, and besides, the attraction was seeing it _with_ her. 

It was a bit of tricky driving to get out of the parking garage by the old roads. The nice thing about using them was that it was fast, and he didn't have to pay, but it took a bit of finesse to come up where no one would see. And then a bit more finesse to get out of the subway tunnel without blowing out his tires on the third rail again. Gods. And then he was there in an eyeblink, and parking, and trying not to look like he'd hurried as he approached the little park.

She was sitting on the bench in one corner, wearing a smart red jacket with fake fur trim, and a black toque. The cold had flushed her cheeks, and this and the sparkle in her eyes conspired to make her look positively enchanting. "Brynjar," she said, standing, and her voice sent thrills through him. "How are you?"

"I... I…it are good to see you, Rán."

"You look like you've been having a rough time," she said, taking the hand that wasn't holding his walking stick. "Shall we walk?"

She led him up the street, to Bygdøy Allé. The night was chilly and damp, and something about passing the lit shop windows made Brynjar feel lonelier still, but Rán's hand was warm, and she had a nice habit of stroking the back of his knuckles with his thumb. "I getted the feeling you wanted to show me something," he said. 

"I do. And then maybe you’ll understand." She led him down a side street, to a block of apartment buildings. Sirens were starting to sound in the distance. As Brynjar saw the smoke, he took his hand back, tucked his walking stick under his arm, and started to run. 

Rán waited only the barest second before increasing her speed to match his. Grim satisfaction showed on her face for only a moment before it was replaced by a look of concern.

***

The meetings had been going on for ten years now. In other words, the group had existed for both a fraction of an eyeblink and as many eternities as it had members. Gods and demigods and ex-gods and wannabe gods and powerful elemental spirits came and went. Some had no trouble relinquishing or at least masking their divinity, and just wanted someone to talk to about the occasional urge to smite someone. Some of them had found satisfying lives doing something else, and didn’t need the group anymore. Some of them realized that it wasn’t for them, and of these, there were some who quit coming after a few meetings, some who just resolved to be more mindful of their divinity and deploy it more cautiously and empathetically, and some who had agreed to be stripped of their divinity, who, unable to take it back up again, just got along as best they could. And some of them, of course, had died. Most gods aren’t used to being fragile.

Cthulhu themself had shown up once. Well. A robed, hooded, gloved figure had shown up carrying a laptop, and Cthulhu had Skyped in. They maintained that they were not a god and had never been a god, that they themselves were a staunch atheist, but that their worshippers were driving them up the non-Euclidean wall. But they just wanted to complain; when it came right down to it, when the group pointed out that these were god problems with a simple solution, they hadn’t wanted to take the next step; had been outright offended by the next step. They had called the group a bunch of puny monkey-gods and disconnected in a huff. And then the robed figure’s shoulders had sagged, and in a burbling voice it had muttered an apology and asked, plaintively, if it might take a couple of cookies before it left.

Every so often an elf or human would wander in with delusions, and depending on the degree to which their delusions vexed them, be either directed to the right services or sent on their merry way.

There were six in the room today. They were down two newcomers--which surprised them not at all, because one had been wavering in his commitment and the other had been singularly unreceptive--and one steadfast regular, which did surprise them, and gave them cause for concern.

Just as Váli cleared his throat and announced that they might as well get started, the door at the top of the stairs banged open. Rán came down the stairs, leading a white and trembling Brynjar Kvam, who had wrapped his arms around himself and would not make eye contact. With a hand gesture, Rán urged them to go ahead, while she and Brynjar slipped into empty chairs, both reeking of smoke.

"My name is Tia, and I’m a goddess, and I don’t belong here..."

***

He hadn’t understood the stakes before. O gods, o gods, he was a monster. All the good intentions in the world weren’t going to fix what was wrong with him. It had never been about what he did. The problem was who he was, and if there was a way to fix it, he had to try. O gods...

Now it was his turn to share. They were looking at him. They _knew_. Of course they knew. Hadn’t they all been in this position once? All except for perhaps Tia, who hadn’t gotten there, or maybe had gotten there and aggressively turned away. 

"I are Brynjar Kvam," he wavered, "and I-I... I-I... this night I has been shown…"

They let his silence sit for a moment. Then Vàli said, "You know what the right thing to do is, Brynjar." 

"We've all been there," Beyla added gently.

"You don’t have to be outside of things anymore. You don’t have to be alone." Uksakka stretched out a graceful long-fingered hand to him.

With a shuddering breath, he took it. Tears sprang to Brynjar's eyes. "I thinking perhaps I shouldst relinquish my godhood."

"Perhaps?" Váli said.

"I want to be a man," he said. "I has no business being a god."

The looks of joy and relief around the circle touched him. He didn't realize they'd cared so much about him. They left their chairs--all except Tia, who sat glowering with her arms folded--and welcomed him into their circle. He bowed his head, and felt their arms around him. "What dost I do?" 

"You just remember," Váli said, "your divinity wants you to keep it. It will _fight_ for you to keep it. And you have to fight back."

"It's a struggle every day," Beyla cautioned, "but it gets easier."

"You have to be prepared to open yourself up," Rán said, cupping his face in her hands and gazing into his eyes. The grey eye showed him something that frightened him deeply, but of course it would protest, feed him whatever pretty lies it could to save itself, so he ignored it. "That's the scariest thing in the world, and it hurts sometimes, but it makes a big difference."

"I thought I _were_ very open," Brynjar said in a small voice.

"You have to open up enough to let go of the godhead," Uksakka said. "Most people have trouble managing at first, but we'll help you. And that part does get easier."

There were nods around the circle.

Brynjar thought of his life, of its contours. They had been comfortable. He had liked them. He had liked his powers. 

Then he thought of looking into Vegard's eyes as he betrayed him. Of tonight, of the screams and the tears and the stench of burning and that little girl's eyes. Eye. It had been good, to be a god. It had been necessary in spots. Now it was time to stop.

"Please helping me," he said.

They made him sit in the centre of the circle. The grey eye showed him their love and concern and sympathy... and something else, something that made him uneasy, that he resolutely ignored. He closed his eyes, and tried to breathe deeply, and waited.

There was a terrifyingly intimate touch on his godhead, six touches. Instinctively he tried to recoil, and was held firm. "Sh-sh-sh," Rán soothed. "Relax. We can’t help you if you don’t relax."

With a supreme effort of will and a minute and a half of deep breathing, Brynjar relaxed. The touches grew firmer, applying pressure that felt strategic. It built. He forced himself to breathe. The pressure became excruciating. He fought the growing sense of foreboding, reminding himself that they'd warned him about it fighting back.

All at once, it became enough. The feeling overwhelmed him. "This are wrong," he said rapidly, his eyes flying open. "I cannot doing this."

Beyla shook her head sadly. "It wants you to keep it," she said. The pressure increased further. Panicked, Brynjar tried to struggle, but he was pinned in place by the will of six ex-gods, who weren't nearly as powerful as they had been but still knew exactly where to apply their remaining strength.

With a terrible jolt, the universe cracked and crazed. Except of course it wasn't the universe; it was Brynjar himself, his deity rupturing.

In Kristiansand Kommuneskog, lightning struck the stump of an aspen tree, splitting it down the centre. 

Finn Weber, apologizing and excusing himself under lights that were suddenly too bright, amidst jazz music that suddenly filled his head with jangling discord, got up from the table where he sat alone, knocked over his chair, and blundered into an usher who said, "Take your seat please, sir. You're disrupting the performance." Finn opened his mouth to apologize, and threw up all over him. 

Bård Ylvisåker jerked awake after what felt like a terrible nightmare. Maria, a hand on his knee, made an inquisitive noise at him. The kids looked up from the various screens they were paying attention to. "Falling dream," he said lightly, with a little laugh at himself, but the claustrophobic feeling would stay with him until the middle of the next day.

Vegard Ylvisåker let a dinner plate slip from suddenly nerveless fingers, and it shattered on the tile. It startled him, but that was no reason for him to burst into tears and start shaking like a leaf, and yet he couldn't give Helene a better explanation. 

Every radio within a two-thousand-kilometre radius broadcast a four-second burst of static. 

An earthquake rocked Asgard, and Fenrir, Geri, and Freki howled miserably, Huginn and Muninn adding their harsh voices to the chorus as best they could.

Lights all over Frogner dimmed, and the lights in the church flickered for a moment, but the group in the darkened basement was unfazed. They were expecting it. As always, in a few seconds, they came back on. 

Gasping with pain, Brynjar wrapped his arms around himself and peered around at the others, eyes large. He was gushing magic. Rán stepped in to gather it up and set shunting spells. 

"How do you feel?" she asked, putting an arm around his shoulders, pressing his head to her midsection.

"Hurts," Brynjar said. "I feels... too light."

"Light is good," she soothed. "That's the weight of the world leaving you."

"I likeded the weight of the world," he said plaintively. 

She combed through his hair with her fingers. "You've just taken the first step to a better you, Brynjar. Now all you have to do is maintain. Keep fighting that battle. Don't let yourself be tempted by easy solutions. It’ll be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but it’s the _right_ thing."

They went around the circle, and told him how proud they were, and gave him advice. To be gentle with himself, to be humble, to deal with the pain and the yearnings through exercise or industry or housekeeping. Brynjar tried to listen, and when he found he had trouble listening he took a pen and pad out of his pocket and tried to take notes, but his left hand wasn't obeying well and the paper kept sliding away. He didn't want to be sitting here, listening to their voices poking and pressing at him. He wanted to retreat to someplace quiet and still, and sort his life out. Everything would have to change. No more Geri and Freki and Huginn and Muninn and Fenrir and Sleipnir. No more Asgard. He was zoning out. It was difficult to pay attention. Gods he hurt.

Finally something in Váli's tone of voice snapped him back to attention. The meeting was over. Brynjar lurched to his feet, leaning heavily on his stick. Rán reached for him, and his grey eye saw--in a weird broken way, as though through fragments of a mirror that didn't quite line up anymore--that she would be more than happy to take him to her house and reward him with all the things he'd been curious about, but he didn't feel well at all, half of his body seemed to be sliding out of his control, and the thought of being helpless, of having things _done_ to him, panicked him. He murmured apologies, in a voice that was starting to slur. He just wanted to go away for a little while.

He could call for Sleipnir, and she would come, but Sleipnir was a god’s horse. Just once, part of him begged, but he knew that it was a step away from what he wanted. And giving up his godhood was going to be hard enough, without taking all sorts of detours on the way there.

In the same vein, he should probably start looking for another place to live immediately. He would sorely miss his companions, but they would be all right on their own, and probably better off without him. They didn't need gods. Nobody did, was the point. For now, though, he was desperate to go home, and Asgard was the only home he had.

Driving was difficult, but he managed. He parked the car on Bifrost; the shimmering iridescence would have been impossible to navigate as he was. Geri, Freki, and Fenrir met him on the bridge, looking tense and restless. He saw them, and groped his way out of the car, leaving his walking stick behind. Geri got under his left hand, Freki got under his right hand, and Fenrir nudged him along from behind, as Huginn and Muninn flapped around his head. He got about twelve steps before sinking to his knees. "I will...I will has to move," he told them, aware that he was slurring his words badly. 

Huginn bit his ear until it bled.

There was a snort, then, and teeth closed on the back of his duster. With a toss of her head, Sleipnir slung him expertly onto her back, and carried him the rest of the way to Asgard, to Valaskjolf, the great hall that had once belonged to Odin himself. He wept as he rode, because these were his friends and he hated the thought of letting them go. Pure selfishness, really. He had no right to them.

***

When Huginn croaked him awake at the usual time, his first foggy thought was that it had all been a dream, and he was back in IKEA, hanging upside down from the ash slat through his middle, with another slat through his head. He hurt that much. But as the world swam into focus, he realized that he was in the bed he'd built for himself in one corner of Valaskjolf. Geri and Freki weren't supposed to be on the bed, and Fenrir most certainly wasn't, but Geri was behind his head, licking his ear, and Freki was stretched out next to him, and Fenrir's massive head rested across his knees.

He stirred, and Freki's head came up. With a final swipe of his ear, Geri poked her muzzle behind Brynjar's head and nudged him up until he tried to sit up. Then both wolves got behind him to get him upright. 

Freki came around to the front of him again and eyed him critically. "Ur," he said.

"Rowr," Fenrir agreed, raising his head and nudging Brynjar's legs off the bed.

"Roooo-ooo-ooor," Geri said. 

Brynjar tried to look at her. The grey eye's vision was very bad. "I think I has to leave," he told them. "I don't think I belonging here anymore." He frowned, and poked his cheek experimentally. He could feel a firm touch, but not a light one. 

Geri growled. He tried to get up, out of her way, and nearly collapsed. Today was definitely a walking-stick day. He cast about the hall with his blue eye, but didn't see it. The grey eye was not seeing well at all, but he got a dim shadow of the stick, back at the car. Great.

Fenrir let him lean on him, the fingers of his good hand buried in the wolf's thick fur, and Sleipnir scuttled down from the ceiling. The animals seemed to be hurrying him on his way. They helped him walk out to the stream, where he bathed. When he was done, and was tugging on clothes, aided here and there by teeth, Huginn and Muninn flew out with bacon and bread. He was too moved by their kindness to point out that bacon really ought to be cooked, so he tried to magick the atoms into vibrating faster, but he couldn’t manage much more than warming it a little. While he ate, the birds took turns hopping in and out of the bushes, bringing him wild strawberries. "So kind," he said, propped up against a tree. "I will never forgetting you."

This time, Geri and Freki growled together, and Fenrir snorted. "Right, right," Brynjar said, trying to pull himself to his feet by clutching the tree. 

Sleipnir closed her teeth around his collar and hauled him up. He clung to one of her flanks until she seemed to get tired of it, and, over his protests, deposited him on her back and ran with him down Bifrost. The wolves trotted along behind. 

Fenrir’s yelp, as the giant wolf bashed his nose against the magical barrier, let Brynjar know that they were near the end of the bridge. Yes, and here was where he’d parked the car. He scrambled off Sleipnir’s back, and landed in an undignified heap. "Fenrir, friend," he said sorrowfully, "I know not when I shall seeing you again. But Finn will visit."

Fenrir licked the side of Brynjar’s head. Then the great wolf sat, and began to howl.

Geri and Freki were restless, and Huginn and Muninn took turns flying over his head, pecking at him. "Jeez, I go, I go," Brynjar muttered. He staggered to the Mazda, opened the door, and found his walking stick.

Sleipnir neighed. 

Brynjar turned back to her. "Thank you, my lovely," he said, resting his head against her muzzle--first the right cheek, the one he could feel, against her velvety nose. And then the other cheek, the side with the failing eye. "I will missing all of you terribly."

Sleipnir neighed again, and stamped, her hooves ringing against the bridge. He saw a flicker of meaning in it, and frowned. "What... hospital?"

The wolves barked in unison. Sleipnir bent her head and fixed her teeth on his collar again. 

He shrank away. "No, no, I must not. My thank yous, but I must learns to do without the perquisites of godhood."

She let him go, but she stamped again, shaking her mane. 

"I has the Mazda," he assured her, using the walking stick to get himself to the car, and sink into the seat. He had to pull his left leg in with two hands. "I hesitates to go to a hospital, but when I get to Oslo I shall consulting Finn. Satisfaction?"

The horse whickered, and took a few steps back. 

"I has loved you all," Brynajr said sorrowfully, with a last wave. "I loves you still, with all I has left." He started up the car and drove away, with the wolves howling behind him. 

The old roads were very hard to see. The grey eye’s vision was terrible and misty, and not just because of the blur of tears. After this he would probably have to give up driving--definitely on the old roads, maybe altogether. All he had to do was hold on a little longer...

The vision on his left side flickered out. 

Brynjar slammed on the brakes and tried to keep control of the car as it fishtailed through the ether, but he couldn’t see where he was going. The wheels hit solid ground, throwing him against his seatbelt. There was a sea of trunks in front of him, and then a mighty impact, and then nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: 2SF's "Inside" - https://soundcloud.com/2sf/inside


	6. A Broken Stick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A disturbance in the Force / Timmy’s down a well / The hitchhiker / The weight of the world / Now what? / Hurt/Comfort

"So I think it would be funnier if the graphic is partly _over_ you. And then you do that thing you do with your eyes, where you're going, 'Like, _really?_ ' and shove it out of the way."

"I dunno," Finn said slowly. They were in Jessalyn's office, in the house she'd bought to give Finn and Melantha some space. Her work in containing Fenrir for the government had furnished the down payment, and between the home office and the workshop in the basement, more than three quarters of her living space was tax-deductible. "I can picture it being really good if it's done right, or really cheesy if it's done badly." He cocked his head, a smile spreading over his features. "What if I shove it so hard that it goes over to you, and you have to ping it back at me?"

"That doubles the chances for something to go wrong in the execution," she pointed out. "Ooh…but what if you break a letter or something?"

Finn lit up. "And I try to stick it back on, and it keeps falling!"

"So then the interaction doesn't _have_ to be perfect, because you're never going to stick it back on."

"And whenever we use that letter again, in any graphic, it's, like, got a chip out of it, or it's taped on, or something!" He frowned, suddenly, as if in pain, and the colour drained from his face.

"What is it?" Jessalyn demanded. "What's the problem?" When he only shook his head, frowning, she said, "Are you still sick? If you're still sick, go home. I've got stuff I can be doing until Brynjar gets here, and then he and I can work out his bits."

He shook his head again, as if shaking the feeling off. "Call it a disturbance in the Force. I dunno. Probably a touch of what ailed me last night, but I'll live. Where is Brynjar, anyway? It's not like there are traffic jams on the old roads."

***

Vegard was working on a spreadsheet when a flicker of movement caught his eye. He looked around the office, and saw nothing. He turned back to the screen, and saw it again. Were the lights flickering, or was it just tired eyes?

Nothing he could do about it right now. Except a quick shot of caffeine, and then probably the dance rehearsal would get his blood moving again. He took a generous swallow of Pepsi Max, and capped the bottle again.

Fenrir was reflected in his Pepsi Max.

Vegard whipped around. The office windows that _should_ be reflected in his drink were clear. So was the skylight. He looked down at the bottle, and there was Fenrir, who let out a silent bark, and glanced over his shoulder. The wolf looked forward again, met Vegard’s eyes, and then wheeled and ran a few steps before trotting back.

Vegard laughed. "What’s that, boy? Do you want me to follow you?"

Fenrir barked, and bobbed his head up and down.

"Did Timmy fall down a well?"

The wolf raised an eyebrow.

Vegard felt... wisps of... _something_. "What, Brynjar? Brynjar’s down a well? Seriously? Wait. Brynjar’s... I-N-J... in Jotunheimen?"

Bård knocked perfunctorily and poked his head in the door. "Hey, the crew at Folketeateret want to know if we can head over a bit before rehearsal and sort out a thing. Why are you talking to your Pepsi?"

Vegard rose, grabbing his hoodie and the bottle. "Fenrir was trying to talk to me. He says Brynjar’s in Jotunheimen."

Bård laughed with something that sounded a little too forced and brittle to be delight, clapping his hands. "Of course he is. He’s Brynjar Kvam. Well, we wondered where he was staying. Thank him for the change of address info, and let’s go."

***

"...as the international community wonders what will become of America. In national news, Årdal Police are continuing to search for two hikers lost on the north slope of Stølsnostind, but cite mechanical problems with a helicopter and difficulties with mobile phone cov--"

Nils suddenly dialled the volume all the way down. "Honey, what’s that?" One finger touched the windshield, pointing at the side of the road, which was lightly dusted with last night’s snow.

"Hm?" Åse had been wondering if Superman’s faster mental processing power would translate to genuinely higher intelligence under his aw-shucks Boy Scout persona, or if it just meant quicker reaction times and someone like Bruce Wayne could still outwit him. Now she turned her attention to the edge of the road. "Someone dumped a pile of clothes in the brush," she observed. 

"Yeah, but it was upright a second ago," Nils said. "It was leaning on a stick, and it went down all at once."

They slowed the car, and Åse waited behind the wheel while Nils checked it out.

From where she was, she saw him go to the bundle. She saw a muddy, bloody head lift, and then sink down. She steered the car a little more onto the shoulder, and then unbelted. "Stay here, honey," she told little Silje, in the back seat. "Mama’s got to see to something."

She ran through the brush to her boyfriend, pulling out her phone. "113?" 

"Please no," the stranger slurred. His voice was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. He had gone to his knees on the ground, one hand propping himself up with the splintered remains of an ornate walking-stick while the other rested limply in his lap. "Not... not a strange hospital. I has friends. Please, if you lets me borrow your phone I can call my friends and trouble you no more."

"You sound like you hit your head," Åse said.

"What? Oh. That are pre-existificating. Pay it no mind."

"We’re still not leaving you out here," she said.

"We’re on our way to Berkåk for the shopping," Nils said. "You can use my phone and we’ll bring you to town."

The stranger looked up at them with one blue eye the way that Prinsesse looked at them when they ate bacon. His other eye, under a drooping eyelid, was covered in a white film. "I wouldst be most grateful."

Åse got under one of the stranger’s arms, and Nils got under the other one, and together they helped the man to his feet. "All of the thank yous," he said. "I wreckeded my car in the woods. It were a good car. I winned it." The broken staff was ash, beautifully carved. The second time it knocked against her arm, Åse took it from him, gently, with her free hand. He resisted for a few seconds, and then relinquished it. 

Over the stranger’s head, Åse met Nils’ eyes, and mouthed, _Drunk?_ Nils had grown up with alcoholic parents. But he shook his head, and gestured with his chin over to the car. They put him in the front seat with the walking stick next to him, and Nils sat in the back with Silje. He handed forward his phone, and a wad of tissues from the diaper bag.

The stranger took both with garbled thanks. With the phone tucked under his arm, he put the tissues in his left hand, using his right hand to close the fingers, and clumsily brought the tissues to his sluggishly bleeding nose. This done, he held the phone in his right hand, and stared at it for a long time. His shoulders sagged. "I gived up the power to make it speak."

"You press the button at the bottom," Nils said, "and then along the bottom of the screen there should be a menu."

"Thank you. Thank you." The man’s voice took on an additional note of strangeness, and when Åse hazarded a glance at him she saw that tears were running from the eye with the film over it. "You are so kindly, and I has no longer the means to recompense you."

"Don’t worry about any of that," Åse chided. "Just get in touch with these friends of yours so they can get you looked after properly."

***

Vegard was in the room he'd turned into a home studio, working out what he was currently envisioning as a harpsichord part, when his phone chimed. Who was texting him at two in the morning?

Bård. "We’re outside," the message said. "Let us in."

Vegard crept through the dark, silent house to the front door. He opened it. Bård and Finn were standing on the doorstep, and together they held up a bruised, bloodied, haunted-looking Brynjar Kvam in torn and muddy clothes. 

"Bloody hell," Vegard breathed as he stepped aside to let them in. "What happened?"

"Long story," Finn whispered as he kicked off his shoes, and after a questioning glance that was met with a little nod, bent to take Brynjar’s shoes off. 

Vegard took them to the studio, and gave them three towels, one dry and two soaked with warm water. He bade them wait for him, and then put together a tray of tea, soup, bread and butter, and the frozen cheesecake he’d been saving for a special occasion. He slung some jogging pants and a t-shirt and sweater across one arm. 

When he got back, Brynjar was stripped to his briefs, curled up and shivering in the soft armchair Vegard kept in the corner of the studio. They'd put Finn's jacket over it to keep the white fabric from getting muddy and bloody, and used the towels to clean him up a little. Brynjar looked very, very small. When he turned his face towards Vegard, Vegard backed off, startled. Brynjar’s left eye, his grey eye, had turned milky and opaque, and something about the way he moved his head let Vegard know that he had no vision in it. There was something else wrong with his face--besides the bruise blossoming on his left cheek and the blood crusted under his nostrils--and it took Vegard a moment to realize that the left side of it was slack. "Do you need to go to the hospital?" he asked.

"No," Brynjar said, shaking his head vigorously until he muttered an oath, cupped a hand around his nose, and begged a kleenex.

"Do you want a tampon?" Vegard asked. "We only have adult ones, but if you strip some of the cotton off you can make it fit in a nostril."

"Kleenex is sufficiencificated," Brynjar said indistinctly.

"It wasn’t Jotunheimen; it was Berkåk," Bård said. "He crashed the Mazda just south of Berkåk." 

"Berkåk?" Vegard echoed shrilly. "What were you doing there?"

"It are on my way here from home," Brynjar explained, slurring his words. "I takes the old roads. But my eye are not working anymore. I should have knowed this would happen." He tried to take the shirt Vegard held out for him, but one hand was clumsy, and he grimaced with frustration as he tried to put it on. He stopped struggling and closed his eyes, shoulders sagging. "Help?" 

Finn moved to help him get the shirt over his head without any of his characteristic shyness, with Brynjar cooperating in ways that suggested they’d done this sort of thing before. 

"He walked and crawled for four hours to find a road, a real one, I mean a human one," Bård said. "Flagged down a passing car. Had no idea what anyone’s phone number was, because of course he’s never actually dialled one. So he got them to look up Concorde, which was the only name he could remember that would turn up in a directory, and Kamilla called me, and I called Finn."

Vegard did some quick mental calculations. "That had to be at least ten hours ago!"

"Twelve. Well. Berkåk." 

Finn looked up from where he was helping Brynjar put on the jogging pants. "We took turns driving."

Vegard wondered if this had anything to do with what had happened this morning. "Why didn’t anyone call _me_?"

Finn and Bård exchanged a look. It was Brynjar who said, "Because I askinged them not to. I were ashamed. But they has told me we must go to you."

Vegard dragged over a chair, sat in it, thought about it, poured Brynjar a cup of tea, and then sat down again. "What's up?"

Brynjar drank the tea by lifting the cup and saucer to his lips with his right hand, and using his left hand to keep the cup steady as he tipped the whole thing up. He grabbed another kleenex and dabbed periodically at the tea that dribbled out of the left side of his mouth. "I are _trying_ to get clean," he said apologetically. 

"Yeah? How’s it working?" Vegard put his forehead in his hands. Brynjar being on drugs explained a lot of weirdness that he found, suddenly, he hadn’t wanted to have explained. 

"Withdrawal are difficult to manage," Brynjar sighed. He cast about with his cup and saucer and finally put it on top of an amplifier. His strong right hand kneaded the weak left one.

"This promises to be unbelievably entertaining the second time around," Bård said, putting his hands on Brynjar’s shoulders, "but it’s late, so I’m gonna stop you there. Vegard, he’s trying to quit being a _god_. And we need you to talk some sense into him."

"Trying to quit being a god," Vegard echoed, raising his head. He sat for a moment. "You know I’m the last person to ask to do this, right?"

"For the billiondredth time," Brynjar said irritably, "it are not just because of Vegard."

"So you keep saying," Finn shot back, sounding exasperated, "but you won't tell us _why_."

"Hast thou anything stronger?" Brynjar pleaded, picking up his teacup again. When Vegard shook his head, Brynjar said, "I am telled I must explain to Vegard, and I wouldst not say it twice, so here: I meeted a woman who agree with you that gods are not a good idea. She showed me. She _showed me_. She taked me to a house, burning. There were a little girl in the fire, hurted and burned, her parents dead. Rán only asked me, What do you tell that little girl? As a god, how does you justify her pain? I had nothing."

Thoroughly disgusted, Vegard sprang up from his chair and started to pace. "This is a perfect illustration of why, of why… Who _thinks_ like that? Who sees someone in pain and their first thought is, Gee, how can I make this person understand that it's _really_ all right? Well? What did you tell her? How did you justify yourself to a hurt and grieving child?"

"What could I possibly said?" Brynjar demanded, looking up at him, tears spilling over. "I couldst not heal her safely, or return her parents to her. I lookinged into her remaining eye with the grey eye, the eye that shouldst know what to do, and it showed me only the abyss of her pain. Do I say that it are a small pain against the backdrop of things? It were not small; it were her whole world, raw and screaming and lost, with her trying to be so brave. Gods should not existify in such a world. I had no comfort for her. I couldst only douse the flames and humbly see to her wounds and keep her warmed and stay with her until her grandparents arrives." He lowered his head, and let out a sob. "I has no right to godhood. I are a failure."

"No no no." Vegard had stopped pacing, and he put his hands on Brynjar’s shaking shoulders.

"I think you passed, actually," Bård added.

"It matters not," Brynjar sighed. "I does not want the weight of the world anymore. I does not want the power, or the weight of her pain. It are done."

"What are done?" Vegard demanded, and shook himself. "I mean, what is done?"

Finn had reassumed his seat, but he didn't look at any of them as he said, quietly, "He managed to get rid of it. His divinity. Somehow." 

"How?" Vegard demanded.

"I did what Finn have done. I finded myself a support group."

"Like a twelve-step program?" Bård said. 

"That are a fair comparification."

Vegard snorted with laughter. "And who’s your higher power?"

"Your mom," Brynjar said. Finn looked delighted. The shock on Bård’s and Vegard’s faces gradually turned to admiration. "No, no, really. She seem like a nice lady when we meeted her, and I figuring if she dealed with four Ylvisåker men, she must be reasonably superhuman."

"So... what actually happened to your divinity?" Bård pressed. "Am I supposed to believe our mom has it?"

"It would explain her cooking," Vegard said thoughtfully.

"You can’t take off divinity and just hand it to someone else," Finn protested. "It’s not like a sweater. It’s _attached_. It’s more than attached; it’s pervasive."

Brynjar shook his head. "It crackeded. They crackeded it and everything ran out. It still feel too light, but they tells me I will get used to it."

Finn tilted Brynjar's chin up and examined the eye. "Brynjar, I don't think your group knew this was going to happen to you, and if they did I don't think much of them. Cover the blue one?" Brynjar covered his blue eye. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"I sees nothing, Finn."

"They couldn't have known this would happen to you."

"Matters it?" Brynjar demanded. "My own gain justifies it not. It are not right, to be a god. Tell them, Vegard."

"I _thought_ that," Vegard said carefully. "As a general principle I think that’s still the case. But I did know what was going on, Brynjar. It was kind of hard not to put it together after that time in July when you turned my bottle of water into Pepsi Max. Look, I'm still processing all... this. But especially now, if giving it up does this to you, I've been thinking I don't care what you are as long as you're healthy and happy."

Brynjar's mouth worked for a few seconds. "And that little girl? What has a god to say to her?"

It was Finn who answered, sounding uncharacteristically peeved. "What do _you_ have to say to her, Brynjar? Does this bring back her parents or heal her burns? Do you expect brownie points from her, for giving up your divinity? Should she be grateful that she made you like this?"

One corner of Brynjar’s mouth lifted a little. "Go to all of the hells, Finn."

"Screw you, buddy. I'm not joining you down there."

Bård met his brother's eyes. "We're witnessing a beautiful thing here."

Vegard was staring at Brynjar’s joyless half-smile, though. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again. "Bård," he said, "You're more graceful than I am. Can you very stealthily get out a cot and a set of sheets? You know where they are, right?"

"Sure," Bård said, and then paused at the door. "Not the guest room?"

"Stairs," Vegard reminded him, and Bård nodded and disappeared.

Vegard turned back to the cousins. "There's something I don't understand here," he said. "Even before you got in with this group, Brynjar, I was thinking about it. I thought the healing spell I learned just didn't work as well on brains, and that's why I was so tired and you talk sort of scrambly. But that wasn't why I was tired at all; it was because of _my_ spell all along. My brain is fine. So why did"--he gestured at Brynjar’s left side--" _this_ happen after I healed you? Why are all these old injuries even here to flare up again?"

Brynjar passed a hand over his face, kneading the skin of his left cheek. "Firstmost and fore, it are not _your_ spell, Vegard. Thinkest not in those terms, of a thing in your repertoire that you may does over and over. You were... very, very lucky, to escape from this with your freeness and your livingness, and I were perhaps wrong to agree to it for myself when you offered. In gratitude I tells you, never do it again. 

"Nextmost and second, it are not for _standardizing_. It are for making whole." Brynjar drew in a breath and did a sort of half-face twitch, and then beckoned matter-of-factly to Finn, who came closer. Brynjar flung his arms around Finn and buried his face in the smaller man's side. He said, amid muffled sobs, "I _were_ whole. I were a whole Brynjar Kvam, and I throwed it away."

***

The house was a different house, but the cot Bård brought back was the same cot that Brynjar had slept on all those months ago, when he and Finn had first come to the wives, and been found out. They installed him on it, and he closed his eyes right away. His face puckered momentarily, as if he were about to start crying again, but then he turned his face to the pillow and was still.

Vegard clicked off the light, and ushered the others out of the studio. "He should be in a hospital," he whispered.

Bård snorted. "Yeah? And what do we say is wrong with him?"

"I don't like that someone _broke_ his divinity," Finn said. He was carrying the tea tray. "That scares me, that someone could do that. That they _would_ do that. I guess we could take him to Lady Brighid's, but I don't even know what they'd be able to do for him. And over the summer he was a bit relaxed about getting his standing, so we'd have to pay."

"I'll drive him over tomorrow on the way to work," Vegard said. "They can bill me."

"No, Vegard," Finn said.

"Yeah. You guys did the driving today. Besides, I was the one that made him feel so bad about being a god that he went and did this to himself."

"It’s not just that," Finn said. "I’ve been pushing him to come to my support group. And then he found one of his own. When he told me about them yesterday there was something I couldn't put my finger on, something I didn't like, but I thought I was just being silly and jealous. I should have gone with my gut."

"I think we both wouldn't mind talking to you sometime soon and finding out what you know about this group," Bård said, suppressing a yawn, "but I work in the morning and sweet sleep is calling, 'Bård, Bård, do not forsake me.'" 

Vegard offered the spare room to Bård and Finn in turn, but both declined, going home to their own beds. After a final look in on Brynjar, who seemed to be asleep, and a quick bit of cleaning to get the mud off the floor and the dishes out of the sink, he went to bed.

***

He jerked awake an hour later, heart racing. There had been cold, and a pit, and a maelstrom sucking all the warmth away. He reached for Helene. "Bad dream again?" she murmured sleepily.

"Yeah."

She reached back and rubbed his shoulder. "You're okay. You're safe." 

Vegard sighed and rolled out of bed. "Be back," he muttered, yawning, rubbing a hand against his stubbled jaw.

He knocked before entering the studio. Brynjar was turned away from him, breath shuddering, shoulders taut and quaking. 

"No no no," Vegard protested under his breath. He knelt by the cot, and squeezed Brynjar's shoulder. "No no no no no. Sh-sh. Sh-sh."

Brynjar let out a couple of harsh sobs, but some of the tension left him. Fingers brushed Vegard's--from the bad hand, judging by their tonelessness, their clumsiness. Vegard seized them gently with his free hand, and held on.

He stayed, whispering soft nonsense, until Brynjar had relaxed completely, and his breathing lightened. Only when he was sure Brynjar was soundly asleep did Vegard take his hands away, and rise stiffly, and shuffle back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Zappacosta's "I Think About You" - ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FAsAehjXxU
> 
> American friends: if you hug, I offer hugs. ~~If this is harrowing for me, I can only imagine how it must be for you.~~ I am so, so sorry. 
> 
> Minor edits because I looked at my timeline and realized that this chapter takes place November 10.


	7. Pulling Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Handwriting / A council of war / Paper / A nice little family / "You’ve got to expect this kind of thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for tokophobia here.

In the morning, Brynjar was gone, his sheets clumsily folded, a single bath towel used and hung up askew on the rack. There was a note on the kitchen table. His handwriting had started out exactly like Bård's, but over the months it had developed bigger loops, more expansive downstrokes, and little flourishes at the ends of things. It was aesthetically fascinating, but a bit hard to figure out--not unlike Brynjar himself. "Thank you for the hospitality, Cousin Vegard. It seems that no matter what I do, I sink deeper and deeper into your debt. This will not be forgotten." It was signed, "Love, Brynjar K." Presumably to distinguish himself from all the other Brynjars the household had harboured last night, Vegard thought with a pained smile. He was still very, very worried.

***

Fourteen hours later, Finn, Bård, and Vegard sat around a table at The Gael Bryggeri, a bar near Concorde. They were all quite sober, but splitting the bruschetta. The attraction of this place was that it was not unusual to see Ylvisåkers sitting here with office people, heads bent together, mapping things out, and the music was a trifle too loud for a bystander to overhear them.

"There aren’t that many gods anymore," Finn said, consulting notes on his phone. "It wasn’t just that a bunch died in WWII. I went through some of the old records, and things people had written, and the way Brynjar felt that made him do this, it was kind of standard after the war. Like, how could we let this happen? Especially with the territorial gods. They felt like territoriality had gotten them into this."

"A lot of Nordic gods have German versions," Bård observed. "I could see things being awkward."

"Yeah," Finn agreed, "and that’s actually where things get a bit weird." The waiter was nearby, a grey-haired older man, and Finn said, "Hi, sorry, could I get another latte, please?"

"Sure, honey," the waiter said with a smile and a touch on his arm.

Vegard and Bård looked at each other. "I... did not know that about Hans," Bård said finally.

"Oh!" Finn said, blushing a little. "I’m glammed as a girl. Redhead. Denim skirt. A little plump because I thought it would make people not do that. Anyway, one of the things they showed me at the archives today was a letter from Týr to one of Loki’s kids. He and Ziu, his German counterpart, used to get together periodically for cured meats and contests of strength. It was the original sausagefest. And he said the past couple of times he’d seen Ziu, they weren’t equally matched."

"Of course not," Vegard said, "if the German gods were beefing up."

"Týr was stronger," Finn said triumphantly.

"What?"

"Ziu said it was something he was doing for the homeland," Finn said. "He was sickly and his eyes weren’t focusing properly. He seemed nervous and distracted. He said something about giving up his godhood for the greater whole. It was supposed to feel terrible in the short term, because you were lending your strength to the nation, but in the end you’d get your strength back."

"Brynjar didn’t sound like he expected to get his strength back," Bård said dubiously. "Or like he was giving it up for any particular use."

"No," Vegard agreed slowly, looking off into the distance. "But... but it fits." He fluttered his hands. "Ziu does it to strengthen the Fatherland. Brynjar does it because someone has convinced him it’s wrong to be a god. They do it willingly. And if they have doubts, if they feel really bad and they want to stop--"

"There’s an added layer of, like, obligation and morality," Bård finished. "But that’s good news, isn’t it? That means that all we have to do to fix Brynjar is convince him to take up his godhead again."

"I’ll work on him," Finn promised. "Monday, I guess. I don’t blame him for not wanting to come along tonight, but he never said where he was staying, and I don't know how to get in touch with him. He's never needed a phone."

"I can't believe that," Bård sighed, shaking his head again. "If there was ever a reason to take few days off..."

"...it's strep throat," Vegard finished, with a pointed look at him.

"Yeah, strep! I didn't change ontological status."

"He scared the hell out of Jessalyn, the way he looked," Finn sighed. "The bruises are really bad, and he's having a lot of trouble walking and eating. And my first impulse was, we can't put him on TV in March if he's still slurring his words and half his face doesn't work, but--"

"There's physiotherapy," Vegard said. "Helene hasn't been keeping up her certification, but I bet she knows someone."

" _And_ there are all different kinds of bodies in the world," Finn added, "and how much of a douchebag do I have to be to say certain kinds of them can't be on television?" But he wrote--in a hand that was getting tighter and spikier than Vegard's--"call Helene: friend for physio?" 

Bård sat forward in his chair. "So. The group."

"The group." Finn thanked Hans for the new latte and took a grateful sip, and thumbed through the notes on his phone. "Brynjar's been cagey about sharing specifics, which I totally get and respect, but here's what he's let slip. They meet Wednesday nights. Rán is the one who brought him into it. She's a sea goddess. _Was_ a sea goddess. One of Odin's sons is there. A few other regulars. Melantha has a school friend who did an ethnological study on people living with divinity. I was thinking I could toss her an e-mail and see what else she knows."

"About the people, yeah," Vegard said thoughtfully. "Also about what kind of spell would do that. Whether it's reversible." 

Bård nodded. "Also," he said, and then stopped. 

"Hm?"

"Also, whether... I don't know, maybe I'm being paranoid. Like, if you crack open a god, whether you can use that energy for anything."

Finn wrinkled his nose. " _Ew._ "

"You think they went after him on purpose?" Vegard demanded.

"Ziu was giving it up for the Fatherland, remember? Besides, I think if there was an advantage to it, they'd pick the ones who are the most insecure," Bård said.

"He was getting there," Finn sighed, using the crust of his bread as tongs to pick up tomato chunks. "More secure, I mean."

"And then he met Rán," Vegard said, and twin furrows appeared between his eyebrows. "He said she agreed with me. But I never wanted him _broken_. Did I... did I ever make it sound, to you, like that's what I wanted?"

"It doesn't matter if you gave that vibe to us," Bård said, squeezing his shoulder. "It matters if you gave it to him. You did come down on him pretty hard about the raspberry creams."

Finn shook his head dismissively. "He had that one coming. We've talked about it. Especially during the summer, when he was sorting stuff out. He sees how you feel."

"Then he knows! Like... if it was a choice, I think probably it's better to not be a god, if you've got a choice. But I'm not going to blame him if he doesn’t have a choice."

"Someone gave him a choice," Bård said bleakly.

Vegard hunched forward, running a thumb over his lower lip. "I'm going to find out about this Rán character."

"And I'll find out about the spell," Bård said. 

"And I'm on the gods," Finn added.

"Okay." Vegard brought his hands together, and frowned when Bård burst out laughing. "Meet again Monday?"

***

The forecast had been for snow, but a cold rain had started shortly after one and fell steadily, miserably. Sushi didn't seem like as good an idea now as it had when they'd planned this. They'd come straight from rehearsal, and the relatively short walk from Folketeateret to the restaurant left Bård shivering, with icy water trickling down the back of his collar.

The waiter conducted them to a private room where Finn was already waiting for them, and poured cups of steaming green tea. Finn hugged each brother in turn, and then he made a noise of sympathy and rubbed Bård's arms vigorously. 

"You're dry," Bård observed. "How are you _dry?_ "

Vegard's eyes lit up. "A shield spell!" He pulled a pen out of his pocket, and started sketching on one of the napkins. "You wouldn't have to deflect the water drops; just shunt them onto either side of you. Or just get the molecules excited enough that they would evaporate. I'd have to try both and see which one is easier to hold."

"I held a newspaper over my head," Finn said, showing them a soggy _Alpha Chronicle_. The headline read, "SOFT ON CRIME: Leandriel Lavenders promise only coddling as Aurindael wins debate." He grimaced. “The whole world’s gone off the deep end. First America and now..."

"Finn," Bård said wearily, "every krone you spend is a vote for something. Why would you vote for Alpha? It's like they're living in a totally different world." 

Eyebrows lifted. In stereo.

He looked from one to the other. "It's not the same, though. One of these worlds is a fantasy land where everyone is fighting an epic battle between good and evil. The other just has elves and trolls and magic and stuff."

Finn laughed. "Actually, the coffee shop near Jess' has an old djinn man who comes in every day while I'm getting coffee, and he reads it and leaves it, so I take it." 

"What's a djinni doing reading _The Alpha Chronicle_?" Bård shrilled.

The waiter chose that moment to bring three bowls of miso soup.

"How's Brynjar?" Vegard asked.

Finn let out a bitter laugh. "He called that number you gave him from Helene, Vegard. He's got an appointment tomorrow. And I helped him fill out the paperwork to expedite his application for standing. Um. He got a new cane. He hates it, but it lets him be a little more mobile. And between you and me, I'm trying to figure out how to make a wrist brace both stable and pretty in wood. But don't say anything to him, because I'm not sure I can."

"So what's the laugh for?" Vegard pressed.

"Because when I started asking questions, he gave me a message to pass on. He's not going to help us about the group. His choice was freely made, and there are things gods face that ordinary people don't, and even if he's having second thoughts, they only did what he gave them permission to do. They don't deserve to have their lives disrupted and their privacy invaded."

"Ah," Bård said, and Vegard hung his head a little.

Finn pulled a file folder out of his laptop case. "So, here's what Melantha's friend was able to give me on them…"

"But Finn, you just said--"

Finn shrugged. "He had a message. I passed it on."

"Don’t you have your own group where, like, what we're doing is a huge breach of whatever?" Vegard demanded.

"Uh, yeah. I do have my own group, that I'm probably going to tell all about this tomorrow, and I've been thinking about it a lot. If I was doing this to them, this would be a breach of our code of conduct. But first of all, it's not my group, it's Brynjar's, and he's not doing this, I am. Second, you know how I know what's a breach of conduct? Because my group _has_ a code of conduct. That I had to seal when I joined. And if somebody in the group bloody traumatizes me into agreeing to making huge changes in my life, it doesn’t matter if everyone else thinks changing is a good idea too; the badgerer is out of line, and the rest of them have a responsibility to give me the time and space to sort it out. There are _ground rules_."

"Inside voice," Bård said mildly.

"Right. Sorry. Also, the possibility that someone did this to take his magic makes me sick. It seriously keeps me up at night, and I don’t need more things keeping me up at night. I don't, like, _blame_ all of them for that, because I'm willing to bet some of them have been victimized the same way themselves, but I do want to get to the bottom of it. And I want it to stop." He set the file down in front of Vegard with a _thunk_. "And I want my brother back."

***

Melantha Aruviel banished the repulsion spell as she walked in the door of the flat in Ekeberg. It had kept her dry, but the dampness in the air had chilled her to the bone, and the first thing she did after taking off her boots and putting the kettle on was pad to the room she shared with Finn, skin off her pants and skirt and blouse and jacket and jerkin, and change into a fuzzy pair of ivory-coloured pyjamas.

She was devoting at least four hours a day now to the job that Dr. Freidag had quietly set her up with in September, a research gig with faefactcheck.no. She was fact-checking the claims being reported by Alpha news outlets and others and forwarding corrections to the editors of the site. Within hours--long enough for the editors to check _her_ sources--these would be disseminated on the site, put into press releases, and otherwise forwarded to independent news sources. It was an endless source of consternation, that people kept repeating the same thoroughly disproven claims, and using them as the basis of _other_ claims, but it brought in a bit of extra money, looked good on her CV, left her time to work on her own projects in the evenings, and was at least... _something_. Finn worried about her stress levels, but she assured him that even fighting an uphill battle was better than watching helplessly as the nonsense perpetuated itself uncontested.

Two and a half months. Six and a half to go. She wasn’t a religious woman, but as she settled down with an article on the influence of ifrit culture on spell structure amidst the small but growing population of urban poor lios alfar, she nevertheless traced a supplicant’s glyph to Freyja on her belly. _Please, my Lady, let this one live._

The doctor had assured her last week that everything looked normal. That everything was fine. About half of all first pregnancies failed; it just happened. And if she really, really needed a reason beyond that, what the doctor didn't know was that Finn had been a little between species for the first one. Elves and humans were cross-fertile. Elves and changelings, probably not so much. Finn had come to her in tears in September, confessing what she'd already worked out for herself. That might have been it, or it might not. There was no way of knowing, and no undoing it, and no question of blame. After all, she was the one who’d taken off her contraception spells when she did. 

Finn had needed a lot of coaxing and reassurance, at the beginning of their relationship, to convince him that he was really the one she wanted, that she wasn't going to throw him over for Vegard if an opportunity presented itself. In the first place, it wouldn't. Vegard had been with Helene since Melantha had been a gawky teen still dutifully chairing Bright Futures meetings and plastering Kosete Dverger posters on the linden trees in her room and not seeing the irony of that. She wasn’t sure if Vegard had been oblivious or just impervious to her twenty-two-year-old self’s ministrations in 2007, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him. 

In the second place, frankly, she didn’t _want_ to. Vegard was a very pretty man, and seeing him overwhelmed by the Stone of Sælu again had been fun, but she’d quickly stopped blaming her younger self for letting him get away. He was gorgeous and smart and kind, but there was just no chemistry there. They were all good friends, now, and Helene’s number was on the refrigerator in case she needed anything, anything at all, but Vegard was all about gyroscopes and airplanes and musical theory and gadgets and the position of the sun, and Melantha’s passions were history and culture, with a side of close combat thanks to her father. 

In the third place, Finn loved her in return, and _that_ was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen. That had been her first clue, the day they’d met, in the closed-up store where Finn had Fenrir sequestered. Vegard had always politely borne her touch; ergo, the man who basked in it, leaning in, shoulders relaxing, could not be Vegard. As he had regretfully informed her himself, a few seconds later. He had brought her little gifts. He had asked about her work, and been genuinely interested in her answers. He was mindful of his station as a changeling, but she, rich and Bright, didn’t have to be, and it had been fun to flirt with him, to play with his curls and make him blush. She could have taken advantage of him, and did not, and felt very virtuous. 

Curled up on the couch with a sheaf of papers and a cup of herbal tea, Melantha undid the drawstring on her pyjamas, and retied it more loosely. She knew it was silly, it was perfectly safe, but there was something at the back of her mind that fretted about it digging in, convincing the fetus that this wasn’t a hospitable environment. It was irrational, she knew that, but she knew the worry wasn’t good for her either, and if it could be alleviated by something as simple as retying the drawstring, that was what she would do.

Rather than enter the tunnels around Varggrav with Finn and Brynjar and Fenrir and their dálki escort, she and Jessalyn had gone to talk to their father, who had considerable clout in the Brightist movement. Maybe they could convince him to solve this non-violently. They were at the steps of Innilokun Ríki when she had realized that there were no guarantees it would work, that she was staying safe but Finn wasn’t, and that his tearful farewell to her might well be as permanent as he seemed to think. Jessalyn had assured her that changelings were pretty tough, and anyway, what was she going to do if he lived? They’d only been able to afford a month-long life for each. If he made it out of this, there was a fifty-percent chance he’d decay in a week anyway. She’d snapped, at the time, that she could give him the best week of his life then. And Jessalyn had giggled, and Melantha had been incensed. Yes, fine, conventional wisdom said a changeling was basically an animated doll, but the conventionally wise didn’t _know_ Finn. Finn, who had come through and helped the brothers even when every plan they’d made had gone terribly awry. Who had befriended Fenrir the All-Devouring, and captured him to save the world, and been wracked by guilt because of it. Who had been commissioned, by her, to die young. Sweet Finn, who had shyly told her she was the best thing in his life, and then walked off to what he was sure was his death. She had kissed him on the forehead.

She had spent most of the night talking to her conservative father, who loved his daughters even if he hated everything they stood for. She couldn’t even remember exactly what he’d said now. But it had made everything spring-clear. And when, in the pale morning light, she’d seen Finn emerge from the mountain tunnels, pale and haunted-looking, his clothes drenched in the sap that flowed through a changeling’s veins, she’d launched herself at him. 

She hadn’t asked questions, but there were flakes of dried blood on his forehead, and strange magics crackling across his skin, and his sweat, when she buried her face in his curls, smelled... different. She had taken him home, him and Brynjar Kvam, much to Jessalyn’s consternation. The word had come from Bård that Vegard had been struck by some sort of sleeping sickness, could barely sit through a mealtime without nodding off. Melantha still asked no questions. She voiced no suspicions. When a week had passed, and neither Finn nor Brynjar had died nor even declined, she was not surprised. 

She’d had to be gentle and loving and very patient. Sitting in the prison realm with her father, on a visitor balcony overlooking the Twilight Plains of Auðn, smitten and anxious and trying to keep her mind at the task at hand and not on the memory of the way Finn’s body fit in her arms and the tears in his earnest brown eyes and his little shudder as her lips had touched his forehead, she had thought of _course_ this wasn’t going to be like her other relationships, but in the cold light of day, with a man who had no home and no job and no education and no standing and no real family and only a theoretical knowledge of the world he lived in, that bore careful thinking about. She knew about the brain chemistry of infatuation. This wasn’t the first time she’d fallen hard for someone, not even the first time she’d fallen hard for someone whose presence in her life would raise eyebrows. 

One thing was very different, though. She had grown up with ample resources. She’d rarely heard the word no, and when she heard it, her father had taught her to keep pushing until she got a yes. Even after Linnael Aruviel’s conviction and disgrace, and surrender of their stronghold in Trondheim, Melantha still had money, connections, and drive. She knew that both emotionally and materially, she had the power to hurt Finn Weber in ways that no one deserved to be hurt. And if she was ever for a moment in danger of forgetting that, she was sure he would be gratified to learn the number of people who had taken pains to remind her. In short: if she was going to take him, she was going to have to keep him, and keep him very well. 

She sipped her tea, smiling at _that_ memory. The smile faded. In the end, despite her best efforts, she had hurt him after all. Devastated him. She had known that he wanted a family. She wanted one too, eventually, and when she felt things starting to go off between them, when little things made her worry that he was thinking seriously about striking off on his own, she had thought that giving him a child would make it clear to him that she was serious, that he didn’t have to worry about what he meant to her. It had been too soon, she thought, wiping away tears. 

Her father would have berated her for crying. The ability to cry without guilt was something she’d learned from Finn. 

The loss had made her look at him with fresh eyes. When he’d met her at the hospital, she’d kept the tears back with the idea that she had to be strong for him, even if she could barely manage it for herself. He had kissed her tenderly. He had spoken to the doctor. He had called Jessalyn and their father, even though he regarded Linnael Aruviel with a deep and abiding dread. He had called Brynjar and tasked him with giving them a ride home and letting their acquaintances know. He had helped her sit down on the couch, and offered her a soothing spell that she refused. He had been so quiet and gentle and self-possessed that in her grief she thought that the one thing keeping him here was gone, and that he was surely marshalling his resources to take his leave of her. Then he sat down next to her, and she braced herself for the second great loss that day. What he said was, "Melly, my sweetness, my heart, I need to cry now. If it makes you uncomfortable, I can go in the other room and do it. Or--" He had met her eyes, his own shining, and his voice broke as he said, "--you could cry with me."

After losing a child, her dignity seemed like a very small thing. She had buried herself in his arms and they had sobbed together, on this very couch. She had let herself go to pieces, and Finn Weber had gathered her up and kept her safe until she could put herself back together again. And he had stayed.

Now she wrapped her arms around herself, and thought that it would be nice to have him here, to refill her cup of tea and rub her sore feet and ask her how her own article was progressing--he had, all unknowing, a knack for asking the best possible questions. Maybe it was thinking about that day that had done it, and maybe it was the fact that Thursday would be as far as the last pregnancy had gotten, and maybe the chill had just gotten into her bones and made her tense, but she was feeling on edge tonight. But he was with the brothers again, and they were all trying to help poor Brynjar, who was still dragging himself doggedly to and from work.

She'd seen him today, when she walked over to bring Jess the little food processor. Fortunately the airbags seemed to have saved him from the worst during the car accident, but his bruises were still horrific. He complained bitterly that the aluminum cane with the forearm brace was ugly, she suspected because it was the only thing he felt he could complain about, everything else having technically been his choice. She was just having a needy moment, Melantha admonished herself; Brynjar was a wreck.

Later, she would wonder if she’d heard a miniscule noise on the stairs. Something made her get up and wander back out to the kitchen. The floor was getting cold. She’d been renting this place for four years, and she hadn’t had a problem before, but now she noticed that her feet were very sensitive to cold. Hormones, probably. She did have house socks. Was there a gap under the door that she should seal up?

Her eyes fell on a folded piece of paper. There turned out not to be a gap, so it hadn’t been slipped underneath; it must have come through the mail slot. She took it up, and unfolded it to read the words handwritten in block letters, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

NICE LITTLE FAMILY  
IF YOU WANT TO STAY A NICE LITTLE FAMILY  
TELL YOUR BOYFRIEND  
STAY OUT OF OUR BUSINESS  
QUIT INVADING OUR PRIVACY  
LEAVE GODS AND TRAITORS ALONE

Melantha sat, heavily, one hand pressed to her lips, the other crumpling the paper. 

Even these days, her first instinct was to go to the dálki. She drew the non-emergency glyph to summon them, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Two hours later, she was back on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and reading with the tip of one ear swivelled towards the door, she heard the creak of the stairs, and then fumbling right outside the door. The dálki would announce themselves, wouldn’t they? She momentarily considered her sword, hanging over her desk, and banished the thought. Too heavy. She stole into the kitchen, drawing a knife gently from the block. The paring knife... great. Well, she’d make it work.

The door opened, and her battle cry was choked off. "Finn!" she said.

His face lit up when he saw her, and she slipped the knife onto the counter and enfolded him in her arms, clinging fiercely, even though he was soaking wet. "Hey, hey," he murmured, putting one hand on the small of her back as he worked at the zipper of his burgundy windbreaker with the other. He slipped the jacket off and then hugged back. "Mmmmmm," he sighed. "You’re so warm." Frowning suddenly, he looked up, pulling down his foggy glasses to peer at her. His hair was still streaming. "Are you okay, Melly? You’re shaking."

"I’ll get you a towel," she said, pulling away from him and retreating to the ground floor bathroom. She used that short time to take deep breaths, and calm her hammering heart. 

When she got back, he had taken off his boots and was waiting by the kitchen table, eyes dark with concern. "Darling, what happened? What is it?"

She enfolded him in the towel, squeezing the water out of his curls, and pressed his head to her shoulder. If he knew how badly she’d been scared, he’d feel terrible for leaving her alone. She’d worked so hard to give him room to become himself. She didn’t want to undo it now. Whoever had sent that letter didn’t deserve her fear. "I just... someone sent me a thing. It’s nothing. I’m all emotional. Hormones."

"Can I see this nothing that upset you so much?"

She sighed, and cast her gaze over the table. Not there. Not on the floor, either. "I think I threw it out," she said, inwardly chastising herself. If the dálki _had_ come, she’d have a fine time explaining _that_ to them.

"What kind of thing was it?" he probed, and against her chest she could feel his jaw tightening.

It was gone now. It was gone, and she was not going to let silly threats make him feel bad about going to help his brother. "Nothing for you to worry about, sweetness. Nothing for either of us to worry about."

When he had gone to change, she went back to her book and found the letter crumpled and shoved between the seat cushions. She thought of calling him and showing him, but instead she slipped it into her purse.

***

The next morning, she went to her neighbourhood’s dálki miðstoð in person. "I telephoned last night," she said, mustering all of her Bright Court _hauteur_. "No one came. What if I’d been in real danger?"

"If you’d been in real danger, milady, you probably wouldn’t have called the non-emergency number," the desk gjestgafi pointed out. "It was after eleven. People generally don’t appreciate us knocking on their doors at all hours for non-emergencies."

"Well," she said, "someone put a threatening letter in my mail slot." She pulled out the letter, thought about apologizing for the crumple marks, and then reflected that balling it up and tossing it out was probably a perfectly ordinary response. 

"All right," said the dálki officer. "Was anyone hurt?"

"No, thank goodness."

"Do you live there alone?"

"My boyfriend lives with me," she said.

The officer handed her a piece of paper. "Fill out this form, seal it, date it, and we’ll start a file."

"...That’s _it?_ "

"You’re Melantha Aruviel," the gjestgafi said with a shrug. "You’re politically active. It's known that you work for some radical political interests. You’ve got to expect this kind of thing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Kate Bush's "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAj8suae3WY


	8. A Scandal Surfaces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Detective work / Second warning / A happy tree / Brynjar’s apostasy / Rán has people / The headline

When he got home after that night's show, Vegard kissed Helene, looked in on the kids, changed for bed, and snuck into the sewing room. He unlocked an artfully distressed rolltop desk, opened the thick file Finn had left with him, and set up his laptop. Finn had wrung all the raw data he could out of Melantha's contacts. Now Vegard's job was to make sense of it. Wearing his glasses, so that he could easily switch back and forth between reading and a screen, he pored over the thick sheaf of documents.

Rán seemed to be going by Rán Tálbeita these days. Scary, how much data there was to be had. Some of it came from regular human sources: she had a thing for Espresso House, he noted with grudging approval, and periodically parked a white 2013 Kongensmål in Oslo lots, and bought fair trade chocolate at a little shop in Majorstuen and Nine Inch Nails songs on iTunes. Some of it came from magical sources: she spent a lot at Fortrylle to get a tailored attraction spell renewed once a week, and had a weakness for fourteenth-century light poetry. Some of it was a mix. She showed up on CCTV, albeit imperfectly, but it was an elven algorithm that identified her interference pattern, as unique as a fingerprint if you knew what you were looking for. Here she was at the parking place. Here she was at an ATM. Here she was at a church in Frogner. Here she was at Arakataka. And here. And here. And here. She must really like their turbot. 

Vegard leaned forward. Two of those images were the same people. At least, same heights, same hair, same way of carrying themselves, their features obscured by the lens flares peculiar to elves. Something about them was vaguely, vaguely familiar. He pulled them out of the pile and set them aside.

Bank information, these other papers. Biweekly payments going into her accounts from someone named Kilpi. Every couple of months, a hefty payment labelled only "Consulting." She was getting a good deal on her mobile service. He frowned, and went over the three months of transactions again. This was weird. It took him a moment to figure out why: nothing that looked like an outlay for housing. Even if she owned her home free and clear, she would have to pay property taxes. Unless someone else was paying for her housing costs. And her car. She paid for gas and parking, but that was it.

He googled Kilpi. Skiwear? Odd, for a former sea goddess. But Kilpi was also a band, he saw. And Google was asking him, did he want _kelpie_? Well…did he? He'd heard of kelpies, but never seen one.

Earlier this year, when he and Bård were running from the Peace Division, the elven special policing agents, their friend Kai had given them his and his boyfriend's old mobile phones. Eavesdropping on an ordinary mobile signal, using magic or plain old human technology, wasn't difficult, but Kai had a PhD in Magical Physics with a specialty in glamour--Vegard and Bård wore contact lenses that he'd developed, and Finn and Brynjar's show was going to be filmed through the camera lenses he'd pioneered--and then to use a particularly sophisticated kind of glamour to disguise himself as a lios alfr. In short, he had a lot of technical knowhow and a big secret, and the phones he'd given them were impervious to magical hacking, and outfitted with a scrambler device similar to the sort found on a skrib. But what was most important now was that Kai had the Wild Hunt bookmarked. Vegard had never been able to pull it up on any of his own computers, but it would give him results specific to the magical community. He typed "kilpi" and then clicked, "Unleash the Hounds!"

And sighed. "Showing results for _kelpie_ ," it said. And in tiny letters underneath, "Click to show results for _kilpi_."

This he clicked. The only results in Norwegian seemed to be from the Samkoma. Kilpi Security. All of the links he clicked were PDFs. Budgets, mostly. They went back to 2010. Kilpi was a line item. 

So, Rán was in government security. He was a little surprised, but not much; of course it would be something shady. And those people at Arakataka were probably Bright Court politicians; that was why they looked familiar.

Was the Bright Court seriously funnelling magic from gods? Or had he been watching too many episodes of _Sherlock_? It would be nice if people could be tied up into nice little packages the way a detective story could, but in his experience that was a bit much to hope for. Certainly, something didn't feel like it lined up properly... but maybe he just wanted there to be something more because she'd hurt Brynjar. 

He sat, one hand propping up his chin, shuffling and reshuffling papers, until he was good and sure that the effort was no longer a productive use of his time. He would have to bring this back to Bård and Finn to make more headway. 

With a sigh that turned into a yawn, he pushed back from the desk, pulled the top down, and locked it. For one wild moment, he thought of swallowing the little brass key. 

He snickered at himself as he wandered out of the sewing room. Oh, now, he was _really_ tired. Tired and probably on edge. The exigencies of passing a brass key aside, he was going to feel really silly when he had the information he wanted, and had to get back into that desk in a couple of days' time.

The desk would stay locked for months and months. By the time it was opened again, none of the contents would matter anymore.

***

The wireless signal had been scrambled, the IP address impossible to trace. They were getting smarter. And closer. But they weren't exactly dealing with trolls here. Given where the other requests had been traced to, it wasn't hard to figure out who was running searches on Kilpi Security.

A quick search called up the right phone number. It picked up on the third ring. A woman's voice answered. "Hello?"

"Melantha Aruviel?" 

"Speaking. May I ask who's calling?"

When making this type of call, it was always better to sound a little bit bored. Not angry; angry let them know they'd managed to upset you. Bored made it sound like you did this sort of thing all the time, enough to be utterly unmoved by it, and would think nothing of taking it to the next level. "You and your boyfriend were warned once already. If we have to get in touch a third time, you're not going to like it. Nobody is."

"You don’t scare me," she hissed.

"Super. Let it go, and we won't have to start." And... end. Done.

***

Beyla was usually the first to arrive at the recovery group. She was the one who would turn the lights on and arrange the chairs and start the coffee and put out cookies. She didn't coax life from the earth anymore--in fact she'd noticed since she'd given up her divinity eight years ago that she'd developed something of a brown thumb--but that was no reason to let people, especially fragile ones, go uncared for. And perhaps when the new boy was sufficiently broken in, they could coax Váli to bring in the bottle of nectar he'd been bragging about.

Now she got down to the church basement and turned on the light, and gasped. A single chair had been drawn into the circle, and there was someone sitting in it. "Brynjar!" she said, pleased to have remembered his name. "Sorry, you startled me. You've just been sitting here in the dark?"

"Apologetifications," Brynjar said. Under his duster, he was wearing a grey hoodie and a t-shirt that said “YES I’ve tried yoga." "I are so slow these days. I thinked it best to allow much time to arrive."

"How are you doing? How's it going so far?"

He raised his head for the first time. His working eye gazed at her levelly. "It are not going well."

"I'm sorry," she said, drawing up another chair and sitting beside him. She thought about asking him about it, and then decided to wait until the rest of the group had arrived, so he wouldn’t have to tell it twice. Instead she said, "It was hard for me too, the first few weeks. Being a goddess had been my whole life. But it gets easier."

"I losted my home. I losted my car. I losted some of my closest friends..."

He was slurring his words badly. "Are you drunk?" she asked. She wondered if she should advise him to sit this one out. Then again, Váli.

Brynjar glared. "No. I also losted the feeling on the left side of my face."

"That's unusual," she said.

"I losted my eye."

"Well now, you knew you couldn't keep that."

"It are not fair, knowest thou?" he said, tears leaking out of the blue eye. "I were a happy tree. I haved my family close. I did not chose this. Have you ever been cutted down, Beyla? You die of thirst. It take a long time. I knowed not what was planned for me, so I made peace with my death. Then to be carved down, to has my life relocated into organs and my mind shoved into a brain that they stuffs full of things that are not tree-wisdom... to get all these _nerves_ , and then the programminging, and then less than a day later to has it all mangled, to hang in monsterrific pain for nine days... I think I has beared up remarkably well, Beyla. I were never asked, but I has been game. I has done the things I was supposified to do. One time, but one, I makes a selfish choice. I accepts an offer I know I shouldst not. We were both trying to stop me being a god, you know. He maked me a man, but I stayed a god, and that have pained me these many months, to see his energy sucked in vain."

A tree... almost one of her own, then, and she thought she understood what might have happened, now. Her fingers itched to bless him, to comfort him. Beyla wished the others would get here; this one was too new and fragile to share her moment of weakness with him. Instead she took deep, even breaths and concentrated on seeing the world as it was, willing away the golden traceries that surrounded every living thing if she let them, ignoring the ghost of sap that sang to her through his blood. They were a frumpy fat woman and a thin hemiparetic man in the dingy basement of a church. They were going to sit in a circle and drink bad coffee and eat factory-made cookies with other broken people, and it wasn't glorious, but it was the choice she'd made, and it had cost her too much to be anything other than the right choice.

***

One by one the ex-gods and the one recalcitrant goddess arrived. Most of them greeted Brynjar by name now, clasped his shoulder, gave him tight little smiles. Nergal brought him a coffee, all unbidden. Tia looked straight into his face, consideringly. "Tia," he said, wary.

She pursed her lips and said, "Ever thought of growing a beard? You could be really hot with a beard."

"Shut up, Tia," Rán said pleasantly, and squeezed Brynjar's shoulder in a distinctly proprietary way.

They went around the circle. Rán had been out walking on the weekend when a truck drove through a puddle, and although she had yelled instead of calling up her wrath, she had, for the barest second, tried to make the water hesitate. It had been a reflex. There were shocked murmurs around the circle, and tears welled up in her eyes. Brynjar was sitting right beside her, but he did not reach out in comfort. She was on his left side, after all. 

A man had catcalled Tia on Saturday night, and she had smiled at him and given him acute urethritis. She was unapologetic. 

Váli had gotten a call from a cousin, inviting him to a birth-blessing. He was conflicted about it. Family things were always fraught for him.

Beyla, her hands twisting in her lap, admitted that she had been sorely tempted this very night, although she would not say how. 

"Brynjar," Váli said, "how's it going so far?"

Brynjar fixed his blue eye on him. "I are in a great deal of pain."

"That's normal, for the first few weeks," Beyla assured him.

"Your entire mind has to reconfigure itself," Rán reminded him. "Of course it's going to hurt. But it's like rebreaking a bone so that it sets properly: this is how you should have been all along."

"It passes," Uksakka added. "You get used to it."

"I has been thinking a great deal," Brynjar said. He set down his coffee, and rubbed his left leg with the heel of his left hand. 

"Well, that's good!" Everyone around the circle agreed that yes, thinking was good.

"I has examined my life to now, and the life that stretcheth before me. I has listened to you all," Brynjar said. "I has heard coping, hoping, doubting, musing, cursing, fearing, failing, flailing, regretting, ruminating, and reinforcing." Putting his right hand on the back of the chair, he heaved himself to his feet. "I do not questioning that these are the things you must do, to live on the terms you thinks best. But these are not what I wanting for me."

"You can't!" Rán cried.

There might have been insolence in his half-smile. "My power are greatly diminiminished, but this thing I has control over: I will go. Perhaps my godhead were a crutch. Nevertheless." He fitted his weak left arm into the brace of the cane beside him. "I am needful of a crutch, and divinity were prettier."

Rán got up and blocked his way. "Let him go, Rán," Váli said, and was ignored. 

There was venom in her voice. "And _her?_ Or did you forget her already?"

"My brother maked a very good point, Rán. This--" He gestured at himself with his good hand. "--does her no good. It were hubris, hubris or self-flagellation, to think I could make the universe fairer this way." 

"Well, it's done now," she said sullenly. 

Beyla added, "Without aftercare, who knows how it'll heal?"

Brynjar was already tired of being on his feet, feeling the weight of his weak left side dragging him. "Be well," he said, taking slow, halting steps to the door, aided by his cane. Rán moved to block him again, but Uksakka took her arm and drew her back with a little shake of her head.

"He won't last," Nergal said sadly, shaking his leonine head.

Brynjar, pulling himself up the stairs, called back, "I can hearing you, you know."

"Good," Váli shot back. "Maybe you need to. It's not safe out there, Brynjar, especially for someone who's used to having a godhead. Can't you feel it? Danger, looming over us all?"

"All," Brynjar said through his teeth, pulling himself up the last few stairs, "I feels…is _tired_." He pulled himself up onto the carpeted landing, staggered to the door, and opened it, letting the chilly wind dry the sweat on his face. 

Sitting on the bench at the tram stop, he pulled out the little mobile phone he'd reluctantly bought on the weekend, and texted Finn. "Just left my group. I am taking your advice finally, and taking a few days off to sort myself out."

With a sad little half-smile, he curled his left hand as tightly as he could manage. His muscles were still trembling with the effort of the walk, but he managed a bit of a fist, and was well pleased.

***

"I still think it was mean not to tell him about the elevator," Beyla said primly.

"Oh my gods, we have an _elevator?_ " Uksakka shrilled. 

"That would have screwed up his big dramatic exit," Váli pointed out.

"I wish him well," Nergal sighed. 

"Somebody's got a crush," Tia said, with one of her sharklike smiles. "I don't blame you. He's dreamy. I could just eat him up."

"He looks like that boy from TV," Uksakka observed.

" _News From Nobody_ ," Váli said. "I recognized him immediately."

"But no. Not him. I mean yeah, him, the Brynjar Kvam part kind of gave it away, but when I saw him on TV, even, I thought he looked like that human. Oh, you know. He's got a show too, he and his brother are all over the human airwaves. His brother is the uber-powerful dark wizard..."

"That was all hype," Tia scoffed. This was the most profanity-free interaction she'd had with the group since her arrival. 

"Bård Ylvisåker," Rán said, and if her eyes lit up for a moment before her expression became grave, no one remarked upon it. "You're right. That's eerie."

"I see," Beyla said. "Brynjar is _his_ changeling." Her hand suddenly jerked to her mouth, as if she regretted saying it.

"Changeling." Rán nodded slowly. "'Made in the image of a curious man.' Right. I _thought_ he was shaped funny. Gods almighty, I nearly shagged a tree."

"Well, someone's freed him, obviously," Beyla said. "Those were real bruises on his face."

"Right," Rán said slowly. " _Right._ "

"Thralldom is ugly," Nergal rumbled. "I have read about the process of making changelings into gods. It involves torture."

"It's illegal," Váli said. "Everything about him was illegal. We should probably contact the dálki. Or even the Peace Division."

Rán appeared to consider. "Yes," she said finally. "But I think we can keep Brynjar's name out of it, can't we? If I had known... Listen, don’t bother with the Peace Division, not yet. I have people I can put on this. We can get who did this to him."

"Look at you," Tia sneered. "All ready to go to bat for him again, when five minutes ago you wouldn't even show him the elevator."

"I didn't know somebody had tortured him," Rán shot back. She reached down and snagged Brynjar’s coffee cup, eyeing it speculatively.

"Dunno, sweetie, he didn't look tortured at all when we first met him. Now he does, and that was _all_ you guys."

Rán had already pulled out her phone, but her lip curled as she dialled the number.

***

"Did you see?" Bård crowed, poking his head into Vegard's office the next morning. "You made the front page!"

Vegard looked up from his spreadsheet, mystified. "What?"

Bård waved a copy of _The Alpha Chronicle_. Vegard's face was on the cover. He was shouting, features contorted. Where had _that_ been taken? It took him a moment to recognize the shirt: this was from the foot-tickling segment last year. The headline over top read, "SHOCKER: Vegard Ylvisåker is a blood wizard!" "I had to buy it this time. I'll deal with the karma later," Bård said. He perched on the corner of the desk, unfolding it. "Come on, this should be a riot."

"Let's see?" Vegard said. His voice was very soft; suddenly he couldn't get enough air into his lungs to be louder.

"Just a sec. Ha! ‘Luck has finally run out for the untouchable Vegard Ylvisåker. The human, entertainer, and notorious Dissolution extremist has been long suspected of an array of dark and maleficent magics, but today marks the first confirmation of his involvement in blood magic practices. An anonymous tip to Alpha has implicated him in the unauthorized release of an unnamed changeling--allegations which have been corroborated by dálki reports that place him alone with the changeling who remains unidentified and at large, and--'" Bård's smile had faded. "'--confirmed by analysis of the changeling's magical signature and DNA.'" He looked up. "You’re not finding this nearly as funny as I’d hoped."

Vegard looked away and twitched his shoulders uneasily. "They've got some nerve calling it 'release'. Finn and Brynjar were never _ours_."

Bård got up and walked around to the other side of the desk, to peer into his face. "They’re wrong, right? This is bunk. Right?" 

"You saw how badly Finn was hurt, Bård. He was dying."

Bård looked quizzical, then thoughtful, then dismayed, then aghast. "He said he was mending. Like always. It was just taking longer. I wouldn't have left him if, if... But he set that spell, Vegard!"

"He lied to you so you’d let him do what he needed to do," Vegard said. "And then he said goodbye to us, but I didn’t want him to die. It was the only thing I could think of to save him."

"So you did it," Bård said heavily. "Exactly what they said you did."

"It was my blood," Vegard said.

"It doesn’t sound like they care." Bård started pacing. "Christ, why didn’t I see it? All that time you were exhausted... Why didn’t you _say_ something, Vegard? Why’d you tell me it was your head? You didn't trust me?"

"None of us wanted you to know how bad Finn was because we knew you'd be upset, and I didn’t want you mixed up in something everyone told me was illegal. And anyway, I thought it _was_ my head. I didn’t know any different until they told me a couple of weeks ago."

"Seriously? You didn’t put it together? That energy, that has to come from somewhere. The spell pulls it from whoever’s blood you use. Oh god. My big brother did blood magic. They’re going to come for you. We have to fix this."

"Maybe I should just find out what the penalty is," Vegard said. "Before I magicked Brynjar--"

"Brynjar _too?_ " Bård rounded on him. "Bloody hell, Vegard, I'm surprised you woke up at all!"

Vegard shrugged. "I’m sure he wouldn’t have let me do anything that would outright kill me, but he did ask me if I was willing to pay what it would cost. And I thought the law was what he was talking about, and I said yes then. So maybe I should just pay. I'll stop off at the nearest miðstoð after work and talk to them."

"No. No. Listen. We’ll talk to Gisela, okay? I worked something out with her while you were sick. We’ll talk to her. She’ll make it right, okay? Okay?"

"I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her first," Vegard said. "But I did tell Brynjar I was willing to pay."

The desk phone rang. It was Kamilla. "There's a man here to see you, Vegard," she said. "He says you should be expecting him?"

Vegard exchanged a look of trepidation with Bård, and said, "Tell him to come in."

The man was tall and blond, with a ponytail, a firm handshake, a wide grin, and to the brothers’ lens-enhanced vision, unmistakably pointy ears. He wore jeans and a light parka. He walked into Vegard's office like he belonged here. "Mr. Ylvisåker," he said jovially, his handshake firm. "I see you’ve seen today’s paper. Are you going to come quietly, or do I have to bind you in front of your employees?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Dame Shirley Bassey's "The Living Tree" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9c_qOpiPSk


	9. Processing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The arrest / Barely legal / Vegard with a Seal / Vegard takes a nap / Interview, with unorthodox microphones / The offer

"I'll come quietly," Vegard said. His heart was hammering, but he clasped the man's forearm as if greeting an old friend. He slung on his coat, and shared a look with Bård. : _I'll be okay._ : "You know," he said as they crossed the office, "we were just talking about you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, we thought you'd come around."

When they reached the first landing on the stairs, the elf took him by his upper arm. "We subpoenaed the test results as soon as the issue hit stands, naturally, and Alpha was more than happy to cooperate. You did a monumentally foolish thing, Mr. Ylvisåker."

"I had reasons," Vegard said, risking a glance at him.

"Worth jail?"

"Oh yes."

The elf led him to a car, and held the rear door open for him. Vegard marvelled at the odd combination of discretion and force. He had no doubt that if he tried to run or put up a fight, everything would change in a heartbeat, but for now, both he and the officer cooperated in the charade that everything was fine, they were two old friends, there was nothing to see here.

"What does the car look like from the outside?" Vegard asked, curious, as he put on his seatbelt. There was a woman driving. Vegard thought he recognized djinn features. 

"A Tesla, same as for real. The windows won't show you, though. Or the cage."

"I guess a car means you're not going to put me in one of those, you know, pockets, right?"

"Pockets?"

"A null-space interrogation room?" the driver said. "Not in Oslo. Why? You like those?"

"No. They make me sick. There's too much stuff going on." 

"You're not exactly in a position to be making demands about the accommodations, Mr. Ylvisåker."

"No no no, it's not a demand. I'm just glad, you know? They put me in a room like that in Mosjøen and I threw up pretty much the whole time. It's because, you know how fluorescent lights buzz and flicker, and most people just put up with it? Those rooms are the _whole world_ doing that."

Vegard didn't see what the blond man did, but the driver said, "It's technically correct. Most people can't detect it, but there was a woman in training who could last about two minutes before she started hurling."

"What happened to her?" Vegard asked, curious. 

"She ended up going into communications instead. I think that was her first love anyway. She could talk to you all day about radios." 

"So... what's going to happen to me? I don't know how this works. Tell me what I'm supposed to do here. Please."

"You tell me, whither the sudden interest in doing what you're supposed to do?" the elf demanded. 

"Yeah," added the driver. "Maybe if you'd cared about that earlier, you wouldn't be here."

Vegard met her eyes in the mirror. "My friend was dying. I'm not sorry and I'm not afraid to pay what it costs."

"Is that a confession?" the blond elf said.

"Sure, if you like."

"Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker, by right of law and binding, you are under arrest for the practice of black magic." While the blond elf talked, the djinn woman pressed a button, and Vegard felt a crackle of energy sink from the cage into his skin. "Under the Sigil of Takaus, you are bound by the domain of Scandinavia. Your oathkeeping being in question, this binding will serve as your word. Attempts to tamper with the binding will result in the temporary removal of your free will. Do you understand?"

"No," Vegard said. "What do you mean, my oathkeeping is in question?"

"Mr. Ylvisåker, you just confessed to a crime."

The car pulled up at a blocky red brick building that Vegard realized he must have passed a hundred times before. "I confessed because I'm being honest with you," Vegard protested as they took him out of the back seat. There was something strange about the way his muscles were working. He could move under his own power, but he suspected that if he tried to run away, he would freeze, or flop to the ground. They took his arms, and he walked with them, meekly, into the miðstoð.

A great cheer went up when the door opened. They walked him past an office full of pleased-looking elves--two svartalfar, no other djinn--through to a room, a real honest-to-goodness room, and spilled him into a chair. 

"I'm being honest," Vegard said, again.

"Mr. Ylvisåker," the lios alfr said, towering over him, "the laws of this land are their own kind of oath, and you just confessed to breaking them." He brought his hand down hard on the table. " _Now_. Do you understand?"

"I guess."

Then the elf went out. Vegard looked at the four walls, and thanked his lucky stars they were staying put. He took a few deep breaths, until the urge to burst into tears passed, and put his head down on the table.

He must have slept, because a loud bang made him start to a sitting position, wide-eyed. "Get up," the djinni said coldly.

The elf sat down across from him. "Must be a pretty tough guy, to be able to just doze off in an interrogation room."

"I'm tired," Vegard said, rubbing the side of his face. "It's always hectic when we're filming, and--" He gestured around the room with a disarming smile. "--this is a little rough on the nerves, you know?"

"Uh-huh. You know what's rough on my nerves, Mr. Ylvisåker? Black magic."

Vegard didn't have the energy for their games. "Could you just do that thing with the forehead? The Seal of Luotettavuus? And I'll tell you all about it and then you can decide what my punishment is and I'll just do it?"

"You don't get to call the shots here," the djinni said. "We call the shots."

"Besides," the elf said, "the word on the street is that you can beat a Seal."

"Anyone can beat a Seal of Luotettavuus," Vegard said. "All you have to do is tell the truth. Which is what I would do. I just want to cooperate, okay?"

"Again, this sudden civic-mindedness," the djinni said to her partner, her tone offhanded. "Where do you think it was when he was performing blood rituals on an illegal piece of magic technology?"

"Look, though, look," Vegard said, leaning forward, blocking out areas of the table with his hands even though there was really nothing spatial to convey. "I told you in the car, he wasn't an illegal piece of magical technology; he's my friend. And he was dying. If I didn't do what I did, he would be dead now. So I'll just take my punishment."

"This _friend _," the djinni said, "did you make him yourself?"__

__"No. And he wasn't illegal."_ _

__"Where did he come from?"_ _

__"I don't think I want to answer that," Vegard said carefully. "Do I get a lawyer?"_ _

__"So much for cooperating," the elf sighed, as if he had expected this._ _

__Vegard knew what they were doing, but it nettled him anyway. "I saved him so he could have a life. I'm not going to turn around and get him mixed up in this."_ _

__"Must be a pretty good friend," the djinni observed._ _

__"He saved my life a bunch of times before I ever saved his."_ _

__"We'll find him," the elf said, getting up and leaving._ _

__"I'm not going to help you do it," Vegard called after him._ _

____

***

Outside, Verndari Skandar, whose grandparents had adopted the name Skandriel to fit in with the other lios alfar when the family moved down from Svalbard, but who had reverted back to his original name the moment he'd graduated from the Dýranblað Academy, said to his riddari, "I need--"

"Finn Weber," said Riddari Ruviriel, placing a sheaf of papers in the detective's hand. 

"What?"

"Vegard Ylvisåker's changeling is named Finn Weber, and this is everything we have on him."

"Where do I know that name?"

The riddari grinned. "He was in a comedy special on Omega in late September. He and one of his co-hosts--Brynjar Kvam--were created at NUA Kristiansand in late February last year."

The name Finn Weber had rung only the faintest of bells, but Brynjar Kvam, Skandar remembered, was the one who talked funny. It hadn't been his thing, but his wife and teenaged kids had loved it. "Why does someone keep cloning talk show hosts, anyway?"

"Gods know," Ruviriel said cheerfully. "But Weber's legal; they both are. Barely. Decanted thirty-eight minutes before the ban went into effect. The Bodø dálki faxed over quite an extensive file on him. And a warning."

"A warning? Weber's more dangerous than his original?"

"Only to the extent that he has no apparent sense of self-preservation, according to the note on the file, but mess with him or his sapbrother without a bloody good reason, and Riddari Amphitrya Sorael will personally, _personally_ , come and take you apart, piece by piece."

Skandar shrugged. "Strictly speaking, we don't even need him to corroborate. The firms on the testing reports confirmed that the results were theirs."

"Anything about who commissioned them?" Ruviriel said thoughtfully.

"They wouldn't say. The important thing is, we've got Ylvisåker even if the changelings are off limits."

"Weber's the one who called the dálki in and captured Fenrir. Rode six hundred kilometres with him, in the pouring rain, so that he wouldn't try to escape. And Kvam worked on the outside with them. He was weird, but you could put him to work at anything."

"Two of them," Skandar said thoughtfully. "Life spans?" 

"That's a bit thorny," Ruviriel acknowledged. "One month."

"You think we should be charging this guy with _two_ counts of black magic?"

"I think no one could survive two."

"You think we should bring in the brother, then? Bård? Because there are two changelings, and they are clearly both alive and well."

"Bård Ylvisåker has a Sealed statement that doesn't leave him any room to have done it. The Varggrav dálki got it from him while his brother was asleep. Very, very deeply asleep. _They_ , in case you're interested, imaged it over with their own statements and a short note saying, 'Suspect this was on our turf. If you really want it, take it. Will not prosecute.'"

"Then we have a mystery." Skandar put a hand on the doorknob. "Let's see if Mr. Cooperative can solve it."

***

Vegard was trying to tell the djinn officer about what had happened last year, what had led him to be in the tunnels in Varggrav with a gravely wounded changeling, without giving away anything about Finn. It was difficult, but, he reminded himself, he was being completely honest and forthright. At least, he had told them exactly what he wasn’t going to tell them.

The door burst open again. "So," the blond elf said, "who did Finn, and who did Brynjar?"

Vegard looked away, rubbing his chest. "If I tell you, do you promise to leave them alone?"

"If you sign a confession, I promise we'll do what we can to keep them out of it." 

He looked at it from every angle he could think of. They knew already. He had no faith in their goodwill, but they knew. "I liberated both."

"That's a lie," the djinni said immediately. "No human could survive two."

"I got very tired after. For months. Just do the Seal thing on me. You'll see."

There was a rap at the door. The elf poked his head out, and pulled it back in. Wordlessly, he drew the Seal of Luotettavuus on Vegard's forehead.

***

Hours later, they put Vegard in a holding cell with a many-limbed thing that wouldn't answer his cracked and toneless greeting, but kept climbing the walls. When he lay down on the cot, one hand curled under his cheek, his cellmate investigated his face with soft furry palps, and then withdrew.

He'd told them everything. In a way it had been nice, to clear the air. Well. He hadn't told them about Dr. Torden, who had healed his head injury and Bård's broken shoulder with magic that Vegard had simply copied for Finn and Brynjar. And he hadn't mentioned Brynjar's divinity, but that was none of their business and it wasn't really an issue anymore, was it? They had all the information they needed, and if they decided they needed more he’d already told them he wasn’t giving it to them. Now he just had to find out what they were going to do to him. He’d asked for a lawyer once more, but the system was different here, and they said he couldn’t have one until after his arraignment. 

He must have dozed off again, but familiar voices brought him fully awake. He'd fallen asleep with his lenses in. "Bård! Helene!" he called, scrambling up even as he worked to de-gum his eyelashes. His cellmate skittered off the top of the other cot, to hide underneath. 

His brother and his wife strode up, flanked by four dálki. "Vegard," Helene cried, and the officers with her put their hands up, as if to restrain her if she reached for him. Vegard's anger flared; they could do what they want to him, but they had no right to touch her. But in the back of his mind there was a nudge from Bård: : _Easy._ : 

"I'm okay," he said raggedly. 

"Your arraignment is at six," Bård said. "We'll get you out of here. I've been leaving messages with Gisela's office, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet."

"It's okay," Vegard said, pressing his face to the bars. 

"Back from the bars, Mr. Ylvisåker."

"Okay. Sorry."

He had met Gisela Freidag back when she was a young activist campaigning for svartalfar and Underjordiske rights. He'd saved her from an assassination attempt. Now she was one of the few svartalfr magisters in the Samkoma, the faeries' parliament. She was the one who had reconnected them with Kai, and set them up in Varggrav with accommodations and a budget and a contact person to help with the recapture of Fenrir. He didn't really want to ask her for anything else; appealing to her sense of obligation felt smarmy. 

"Helene," he said. He wanted to put a hand up to the bars, except that he wasn't allowed, and then she would put her hand up, and they would stop her, and he couldn't bear the thought of them touching her. "I'll be okay."

"You'd better, mister," she said, her voice light and careless, and then she looked away from him and dabbed at her eyes with a thumb. 

"Come on, time's up," one of the four dálki said, and shepherded Helene and Bård back down the corridor.

After a few seconds, he sat up, fished his contact lens case out of his coat pocket, and blinked out his lenses. Then he took off the coat and draped it around himself. He settled back onto the hard cot, dragging his knuckles back and forth over his collarbone.

***

Not long later, a blond man roughly shook him awake. "Mr. Ylvisåker, it's time for your arraignment."

Vegard nodded, and sat up groggily. While shrugging on his coat, he looked around for his cellmate, and couldn't see him at all, but just in case, he waved at the apparently empty cell, and something on the ceiling said, in English with a heavy Scottish accent, "Good luck."

The dálki officer led him out of the cell, to where another waited, and they both walked him down the corridor, not the way he'd come, but a different way. The spell from the patrol car was still on him. 

When they left the building, there was the visual jump that Vegard had started to recognize as glamour kicking in. His eyes told him he was at a set of loading docks, with an amateurishly painted tour van for a metal band called Freyja's Exiles parked waiting, and a bunch of joggers hanging around it, breath steaming in the cold. Full dark had fallen, and he took long, grateful breaths of the night air.

One of the joggers approached, holding a water bottle, while another jogger filmed with an iPhone. "Mr. Ylvisåker, is it true you've confessed?" she said into the water bottle, and pointed it at him as the officers walked him to the van.

"I told them what happened. I'm not ashamed of any of it."

Another shoved a dumbbell into his face. "Do you feel that the law is unjust?"

He stopped to think, and had to be prodded back into motion by the dálki guards. There was a growing commotion behind the knot of people. "I don't know that much about the law or why they passed it," he said, "but so far I don't think it's fair to make it illegal to heal someone."

" _Killer!_ " a voice shrieked, as the commotion suddenly broke through. It was a woman, white, elderly, a kerchief tied over her hair and around her chin. She had a hand-lettered sign that read "DEATH TO BLOOD-WIZARD SCUM," and she had been using the stick it was mounted on to lever people out of the way. There were tears running down her face. "Your lot killed my daughter." She whapped him with the sign.

"Ow," he said, as the dálki pulled her away. He shouted after her, "I'm sorry to hear about your daughter."

"You'll _burn_ ," she bellowed, consigned again to the edges of the crowd. "Your soul's already dead, warlock! The kindest thing they can do is make your body follow!"

Then he was being pushed into the van. It was a relief, to get away from the crowd and the questions and the shouting. He sagged back against the seat, and belted himself in. There were five other prisoners here with him, two other men up front and a man and two women in the back. "I'm just going to put my contact lenses in," he told the driver, so they'd know why he was fishing around in his pockets. At the driver's nod, he slipped his lenses in. This was better. He was in a police van, surrounded by reporters who looked like reporters. His fellow prisoners were a svartalfr man; a lios alfr with uncharacteristically short hair; a squat man with reddish-brown skin, horns, and oddly shaped black leather boots suggestive of hooves; and two naiads with opalescent sage-green skin, who sat on trash bags in the back and held hands, weeping but smiling.

As the van turned onto Ennebakkveien, Vegard asked no one in particular, "What happened to the old woman's daughter?"

There was a long silence, and then the driver said, "Seven years ago, some glow addicts decided to sell blood to a wizard who'd put it about that he wanted some, freely given. The wizard overreached. Two kids died--one of them the daughter. One's still in a coma. The other still sleeps twenty hours a day. That's what you're playing with, human."

The lios alfr with short hair rolled their eyes. "Like he cares."

"I do care," Vegard protested, "but I used my own blood. If it was anyone else's I wouldn't have done it."

"Yeah, for changelings. Do you have any idea what those things are capable of? And you just let one into the world."

"Two," one of the naiads corrected from the back seat.

"No," scoffed the one with the horns. "Two? Seriously?"

"It didn't feel very good afterwards," Vegard admitted. "But I know exactly what they're capable of. They saved my life a bunch of times, and they helped save the world. They're my friends. And even if they weren't, it shouldn't matter what species they are, for them to have the same rights I do."

They pulled up to the courthouse. "Well," said the driver, "soon they're gonna have _more_ rights than you. And then we can talk about how worth it you think it was."

***

An hour later, he sat behind an iridescent wall of silence, the only prisoner left, the others having been called up before the bench one by one. He had tried very hard to read lips and faces, to see what was going on, but everyone was stoic and stony-faced.

The spell obscured the rest of the courtroom from him. He supposed that made sense. If he were dangerous, it might not be a good idea to let him see who'd come to his arraignment. But it meant that if Helene and Bård were there, he couldn't see them. He had to believe they were there, though. He hoped no one else. It would break his parents' heart.

The sound made him jump. "Vegard Urheim Ylvisåker?"

The way they used his middle name at these things irked him. They were using his true name to scare him. It didn't, of course, but he knew what they were trying to do. Still, it wouldn't do to be grumpy with them. "Yes?"

"You're up."

He left the bubble of silence leaning on the officer's arm, unsure if his sudden weakness was nerves or a spell, and walked to stand in front of the judge, feeling small and rumpled and guilty.

"Mr. Ylvisåker," the judge, a lios alfr man in indigo robes, said in a tone of amused surprise that may or may not have been ironic. 

"Guilty," Vegard said, and a ripple went through the courtroom.

The judge raised his eyebrows. "Don't you wish to hear what you're charged with?"

"Um. Okay. Your Honour."

"I would entreat you to remember that you’re not in a _human court_. It’s Your Magnificence here, Mr. Ylvisåker. The charges are blood magic in the second degree, misuse of magic, mischief, and concealment of a changeling."

"Guilty."

"Let the record show a guilty plea. Now, then, Mr. Ylvisåker, due to the nature of the charges, and given that you have been co-operative, I am authorized by the Samkoma of Scandinavia to offer you a solution that will allow you to avoid jail time. If you agree to have your magic extracted, there is a facility downstairs equipped to do it, and you can go home a free man within half an hour, having paid your debt to society. How does that sound?"

Vegard's mouth worked, but the ice in the pit of his stomach stopped any sound coming out. "I... I..."

"Quickly, Mr. Ylvisåker. I want to go home, and I'm sure you do too."

He shook his head. "I didn't even know... I have to think... "

"In fifteen seconds I am going to write something on this paper. If it is not an extraction requisition, it will be the date of your sentencing hearing."

"Um, I don't know, I can't just... you can't just spring a question like that on someone, it's not fair!" 

"What am I writing, Mr. Ylvisåker?"

"Jail!" His voice was high and wavery, and he hated it. "Jail. I'll take jail." Instantly he wondered if he'd chosen wrong--what was he going to do about the show?--but the decision was made, and even that felt better. 

"Come back on Monday for sentencing at noon sharp," the judge said mildly, writing something down. "Follow the nice officer. Bail is set at two hundred and fifty thousand kroner."

A bucktoothed woman in elven business dress leapt up from the table she sat behind. She looked fully human, but her knees pointed the wrong way. "Your Magnificence! The accused is a dark wizard with a lot of power, considerable financial resources, and unapologetic disdain for our laws."

"I don't really have a lot of power," Vegard protested meekly. "I just use it in weird ways, apparently."

"That's nice, Mr. Ylvisåker." The judge sounded bored. "Follow the officer. Your personal and household bank accounts will be frozen, and if you try to cross the Scandinavian border, your heart will stop. Crossing back might start it again, but I wouldn't chance it if I were you." He picked up a hammer and rang a small, clear-toned silver bell that hung on the bench. "Court is adjourned. Let's go home, people."

A bailiff approached Vegard with cupped hands, which she then parted in a sort of pushing motion. Vegard felt a spell wash over him and settle under his skin. He felt a sudden constriction, and took a couple of deep breaths. It didn't ease; he just got somewhat used to the feeling. The bailiff led him through the courtroom, to where Bård and Helene stood, Bård sharp in a grey suit, Helene stunning in a businesslike green dress and shawl. Vegard started breathing hard again, and sank onto one of the carved oak benches. Helene sat down beside him, holding his hand, with her other arm around him. "Your brother's just gone to pay them."

The bailiff stood over them. "Sirs, Ma'am, we're going to have to ask you to vacate the courtroom."

"He can barely stand," Bård retorted as he returned, tucking his wallet into his pocket. "What did you do to him?"

"Standard conditional release spells, sir."

"I'm okay," Vegard said weakly. "It's just been a long day." With a squeeze of Helene's hand, he pulled himself to his feet. With Bård gripping his forearm and standing close beside him, he walked out of the room, down a long marble corridor, out the door, and down the front stairs. Helene had run ahead to get the car and bring it around.

Suddenly there were people all around him, all talking at once. Shouting. Someone shoved him, and he would have gone down had Bård not caught him. A camera was trained on him, and by force of habit he gave it a thin smile.

"Mr. Ylvisåker, is the changeling still at large?"

"Mr. Ylvisåker, what do you have to say to the magical community?"

"Mr. Ylvisåker, how will this affect the svartalfar cause?"

Then Bård was opening a car door for him, and he sank gratefully into the front seat. 

Bård leaned over the open door, back turned to the shouting, shoving, prodding reporters, and said, "Okay, we've got tomorrow plus the weekend. You rest up tonight. I'll... do what I can. Okay?"

"'Kay," Vegard said, fumbling to buckle his seatbelt.

For awhile, Helene drove in silence. Vegard sat back and watched the city roll past, afraid of what he'd see on her face if he looked at her.

"You never said anything about this," she said finally, while they were stopped at a red light.

"Brynjar told me it was illegal. I didn't want anyone to know. I didn't think anyone would find out. Even Bård never knew. Besides everything else, I didn’t want him to feel bad about leaving Finn."

"He said that's why you had the chronic fatigue over the summer."

"I didn't know that until a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was from when I hit my head." She started to drive again. He hazarded a glance at her face. "Are you angry?"

"I'm scared. And I feel like I might be less scared, like I might have a better idea of what to do, if it all hadn't been dropped in my lap at once."

"I'm sorry, Helene."

She reached for his hand, and glanced over to give him a tight-lipped smile. "You do get into situations, don't you?"

"Not usually. Only for TV. And magic."

"What did the judge mean, about having your magic extracted?"

"I don't know," Vegard said. "I would want to find out before I agreed to anything."

"He seemed to be pushing it pretty hard," Helene said, "and that alone makes me want to say, don't do it. Although of course it's up to you."

"I don't want to go to jail," Vegard said, "but I don't want to lose my magic, either. I don’t think they could ever take it away completely, because, like, magic comes from this layer of abstraction--"

"--below the Planck length--" Helene cut in, sounding unaccountably weary.

"Yes! Below the Planck length, so it's very hard to access it initially, like, to make that cognitive leap, but once it's there, technically it's there for good. You can drain your own strength so that you’re too tired to get to it, but not take it away. I wondered about mine, I always meant to investigate when I had the energy, but it turns out that it was all going for that spell, and when the spell was finished I got the magic back, and now it makes perfect sense."

"You saved Finn."

"Yeah. And then Brynjar, because it wouldn’t be fair to free one and not the other."

She looked over at him, and smiled, and shook her head a little. "Well, that explains why they kept showing up with pastry." She sighed. "I wouldn’t have wanted you to do anything else."

He couldn't keep a small smile off his face. "That’s good, because I didn't have the energy for anything else."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Giacinto Scelsi's "Natura Renovatur" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG-VxokvJFk


	10. Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No comedy / Jessalyn’s silver hammer / In which nothing is fixed / Vegard offers to make toast

The next day was Friday, and Bård showed up at the office, stomach knotted, head buzzing with everything he'd have to do. Gisela had sent him a quick text to say that she would meet the brothers at his house, and he'd been going over his tasks for the day like rosary beads, reminding himself to call Vegard _first_ , and then come up with some sort of contingency plan, in case the unthinkable happened, except that he also had to get in touch with Torbjorn, he'd promised that he would do that first thing, and there was everything to catch up on from yesterday, oh god...

He stepped into the office and stopped short. There was, unmistakably, a curly head bent over the computer in Vegard's office. His brother looked up, gave him a small, tight nod, and went back to typing.

Bård knocked and went in. Vegard sat frowning at an Excel sheet. "I called Torbjorn," he said, without looking up. He shoved a piece of paper in Bård's direction. "These are the numbers. The top two are flexible. The third not so much. We can make it work."

"Okay... okay. Thanks. I would have understood if you didn't make it in today."

"Too much to do. I've got to work out the rest of the season. Figure out all the things I normally don't have to say, and say them. Just in case."

"In case what?"

Vegard shrugged uncomfortably. "In case we need to call in Jacek."

"What? Jacek? Where's this coming from?"

"If I... have to go away, we can't just leave the show. We should probably call him today, and make sure that he's free. In case he has to make arrangements."

"Vegard, Vegard... You won't have to go away, okay? That's one of the things I wanted to tell you. Come to my house at five. Gisela's gonna be there. She'll fix this."

Vegard looked up at him. "Even if she can, I'm not sure she should."

Bård ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. "Just, just come to my house after." He turned on his heel and went to his own office. No comedy was getting written today, that was for sure.

***

Jessalyn Aruviel had never lacked for nice things, and her father had showered her in jewels and fine silks, but her most prized possession was a dwarf-forged hammer that she'd dubbed Seremonimester. It was plain and utilitarian, but it was hard, perfectly balanced, still under warranty, and the first valuable thing that she had bought with her own money, and she treasured it more than anything else she owned.

Right about now, she was daydreaming, with brittle good cheer, about using it. On fingers. Kneecaps. Maybe foreheads.

Brynjar was away again today and had just e-mailed in ideas, and that was a good thing, because he was most certainly a candidate. Yes, awful, what had happened to him, but he was the one who'd let it slip, in that infernal group of his, that she had never met but would delight in playing like a glockenspiel. If he was here, doggedly trying to make his hand work, she would feel differently, but as it was she felt safe quietly fuming at him from afar.

Vegard, too, for doing this thing in the first place, and she knew that didn't make sense because if he hadn't done it there would be no Brynjar and Finn and no show and nothing to work on, but gods, did he have to plead guilty?

Her sister most of all. _We'll make changelings_ , she'd said. _No one will even know they're gone_ , she'd said. And it had really been time to get her own place anyway, because Jessalyn couldn't keep living with a woman who put the toilet paper the wrong way around and insisted on ruining fish by poaching it in milk and broke the bloody spaghetti in half _every single time_ and then cooked it for two minutes longer than anyone with a set of taste buds should cook it, but she really had not needed to walk in on... what she had walked in on. And now, now Melantha had told Finn that it would be a bad idea to contact Vegard, and maybe she was right, given that Finn was evidence, but Melantha wasn't the one who had to try to work with him in a low-key panic. He'd been like this since he got in this morning, sitting at the sun-washed table, hunched over his laptop, brown eyes enormous, and it was very distracting, and she had to blame someone. She would not even jokingly imagine wanting to hit Finn. Right now he looked like he would agree, and that made it horrible.

She checked her watch. Just past three. "I think we might as well call it a week," she said. 

"Do you think it would help if I sent the court a note or something?" he said, closing his laptop. 

"No, Finn."

He started gathering up the cord. "He did this for me. There has to be something I can do."

"You have to lie low. The fact that no one's come for you already lets us know that he's somehow managed to keep you and Brynjar out of it. You don't wanna screw that up."

"But it's not _fair_."

"Finn," she said in a low, sweet voice, "we talked about this."

"Did we?"

"Sticking your neck out will get you in trouble. Your getting into trouble would upset my sister. You _do_ remember what I told you about upsetting my sister."

He gave her a sickly grin. "You'd bash my skull in."

"Exactly. And then she skewers me, our father disowns her, Uncle Geriel disowns _him_ , the ancient treaty is broken, blood is spilled, the mountains are shaken to the ground, and the whole of Scandinavia sinks beneath the waves because you couldn't keep your bloody yap shut." She gave his shoulders a sisterly squeeze, and dug her knuckles into the knots of tension she found there, partly to ease them and partly because it was a nice and harmless way to make him yowl.

***

The back doorbell rang at five on the dot. Bård, who had been looking on as Vegard tried and failed for the fifth time to program the clock on the new stove--gratifying, to see that it wasn't just him--went to answer it, and was a bit taken aback to see the small round figure in grey sweats and a hoodie. " _Gisela? _"__

__Gisela Freidag, usually dressed immaculately in elven-cut women's suits, put a manicured finger to her lips, and motioned with her head that they should go inside._ _

__"Reporters _everywhere_ ," she said. "Mostly sprites on the lookout. They want dirt. Oh my, what a house! It looks very... human," she told him, eyes roving over the kitchen's clean lines and shining surfaces. "No offence," she said in a hurry, peering anxiously at his face. "It's very lovely."_ _

__This was a far cry from the self-possessed, authoritative small woman who had once firmly said she could do nothing for them, but had, when the occasion arose, convinced the Samkoma to bankroll their efforts to recapture Fenrir. Her body language was furtive and guilty. "You should see Vegard's house," he said, hoping the chitchat would put her at ease. "It’s not done quite yet, but they’ve already done an impressive amount. Helene won awards for the place in Bergen."_ _

__"I'm sorry," she said, meeting his eyes as if she had to force herself to do it. "I couldn't."_ _

__So _that_ was what this was about. "Do you seriously think reporters will care?"_ _

__"Oh, now, hang on." She started rummaging around in a purse big enough to hold the entire collected works of L.M. Montgomery, and then pulled out an _Alpha Chronicle_. It was a very bad photo of her. The headline was, "BUSTED! The Vegard Ylvisåker Connection: Magister of Underjordiske Affairs linked to blood-wizard scum." "You see?" she said. "They care very much about this." She turned to Vegard, who had pulled his attention from the stove and now stood shuffling from foot to foot on the tile. "Goodness!"_ _

__"What?" Vegard stopped fidgeting and stood, rubbing the back of his neck. Abruptly, he went over to the table and sat._ _

__She sat down across from him, looking more like her old self as she peered at him curiously. "My, ah, contact told me that you'd learned some magic, but... how powerful are you, exactly?"_ _

__Vegard shrugged, looking embarrassed. "Level Two."_ _

__"That's excellent, for someone who picked it up in adulthood not even a year ago. But the dálki have seen fit to secure you with Level Fifteen binding spells."_ _

__"People have funny ideas about how powerful he is," Bård explained. "It's the papers."_ _

__She brayed with laughter, but it died away quickly. "Okay, _now_ ," she said, putting her hands on the table, "tell me the rest of it is nonsense too. The blood magic. Please."_ _

__"No," Vegard said around his hand. "It's true. I don't understand what the problem was. Finn was _dying_. From injuries that were meant for me." He shot a sudden, desperate look at Gisela. "Isn't that what you did for us? In 2007?"_ _

__"I used the Silver Branch, Vegard. Not blood magic!"_ _

__"I don't understand the difference," he said miserably, and then he knotted himself up in the chair, one hand over his mouth, and looked resolutely at the table._ _

__"The difference is, blood magic is very taboo, and very, very illegal." She leaned close, glancing around, and said, very softly, "It was widespread when I was a girl, even more so in the tunnels, where people get hurt. It was... no big deal. They taught us how to be safe, how not to overreach. But the lios alfar always thought it was dirty and dangerous. There was a media campaign, a couple of high-profile cases of clear misconduct, and in the nineties the Samkoma full-out banned it. In this climate..." She straightened up. In a normal voice she said, "Maybe your not knowing much about it will count in your favour, Vegard, but... let's just say, it's a good thing your audience is mostly human, because among us this would be, at minimum, a career-ending scandal."_ _

__"Good thing," Vegard murmured. Then he looked up at her, wide-eyed. "What about you?"_ _

__She took a deep breath, and blew it out again. "Well..."_ _

__"That's why all the secrecy," Bård said, his chin coming up. "You're going to hang him out to dry. For the election."_ _

__Gisela looked so stricken that it was clear that that was exactly what she was going to do. Vegard held up his hands. "Look, it's not hanging me out to dry. I did it, right? I even... I was warned that there would be consequences And I was fine with it. We can't ask one of four svartalfar members of the Samkoma to, like, throw away her career for one human guy who doesn't even belong. She's got all these people she represents. Right?"_ _

__She took his hand. "I don't feel good about this."_ _

__"You shouldn't," Bård said coolly._ _

__Vegard shook his head, and covered Gisela's hand with his own. "Don't, don't, don't make it any harder on her than it has to be. This isn't just about us. If she loses her magisteriate, then things get really bad for a bunch of people who don't have nearly the resources that we do."_ _

__"But we had amnesty," Bård said. "The Samkoma passed a motion giving us amnesty for everything we did while the Peace Division was after us."_ _

__Vegard frowned at him. "You never told me that."_ _

__Bård snorted. "You're one to talk!"_ _

__"That was months ago," Gisela pointed out. "The public has a short memory. I don't know if you read the papers, boys, but everything seems to have snapped back into the shape of fear and retaliation again. And I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at anything now, but it seems to be worse than before, in ways that alarm me. The amnesty decision was a legal one of course, but if you remind them, the pressure to unmake it will be overwhelming. My advice is to let that lie. Even then, when you'd just saved the world, blood magic is considered serious enough that if this had gotten out there would have been no amnesty."_ _

__"We didn't save the world," Vegard said. "Tora Jordiskhelten made the spell, and Bård got Finn to the right place so he could set it. All I did was save _him_."_ _

__"So then what does he do?" Bård demanded. "You wouldn't have come here if there was nothing we could do. Would you?"_ _

__"I can give you the name of an advocate," she said. "An old classmate. And I'll talk to some people I trust. Although I can't promise anything, you realize." Her eyes softened, and she adjusted her grip so that she was the one holding Vegard's hand. "Mostly I wanted to give you a heads up: I'm going to have to distance myself from you in the press. And I'm so sorry."_ _

__"I understand," Vegard said. "And I'm not sorry. About me. I'm sorry if it hurts you. I didn't want anyone to get hurt. I just wanted to do what's right."_ _

__She grinned, and tweaked his cheek. "That's my Vegard."_ _

____

***

When he got home, the car was gone. Helene must be out shopping. But Melantha Aruviel was waiting for him at the front door, pacing back and forth.

"Melantha!" Vegard said. "Come in. Please. Sit down. Sorry about the mess. We’re still working on the stairs." He ushered her inside. 

As he shed his coat and shoes, she took off her moccasins with a little sigh, and settled into a kitchen chair. Then she flashed him a rueful little smile, patting what might have been the very tiniest baby bump. "I know. I'm a whale."

Vegard knew there was a right answer to this, and he knew he didn't have it. "You don't look bad. You look pregnant. And I think that's okay under the circumstances."

She grinned. "Oh, Vegard."

"Would you like some tea? Or I have ice cream. Or I can make toast, if you're still at toast."

She laughed, gently. "I'm okay, Vegard. I won't be long. I wanted to say, I'm so sorry about what you're going through."

He shrugged. "I did it. I would do it again. Thank you, though."

"And also... I need your help with Finn."

"With Finn? Sure."

"He really looks up to you, Vegard. He'd do anything for you."

"Oh, now..."

"He would."

"He doesn't have to anymore."

Her mouth tightened momentarily at that. She seemed to get annoyed at reminders that Finn had ever been anything other than a free man. Guilt, he supposed, since she'd been the one to have him made that way. She slipped a hand into her pocket, fiddling with something. "He would. Whether either of us like it or not. But listen: he’s getting this show. We're expecting his standing and his voting rights to come through any day now. And Daddy actually used his real name the other day, instead of just calling him The Furniture. Things are finally going okay for him. He deserves it."

"Yes, of course," Vegard said. Linnael Aruviel had been calling Finn The Furniture?

"He..." She closed her eyes, as if in pain. Vegard leaned forward in alarm. Then her eyes flew open, and she said, "He needs to... not have even a breath of scandal in his life right now. And _I _need to not worry about him."__

__Vegard sank back into his chair, comprehending. "Okay. Well, the dálki know who he is, but the prosecution decided they didn’t need to talk to him. What else? You want me to stay away from him until this blows over?"_ _

__"Just until this is over. I'm sorry. I feel really terrible even asking." She was playing with a wadded-up piece of paper she’d gotten from somewhere, crumpling it and uncrumpling it._ _

__"No, no, no. I understand." He cocked his head. "What _is_ that?"_ _

__"Nothing," she said, seeming to realize what she was doing. Across the room, the cupboard under the sink opened up, and the lid of the garbage can tilted up. Melantha aimed, and expertly tossed the paper in. "You're not angry?"_ _

__Vegard rubbed his mouth vigorously. "I've made a pretty big sacrifice so that he could have a life, and it looks like it's going to get bigger. It doesn't make sense to go and screw that up now."_ _

__"Thank you," she breathed. "Thank you. And nothing about this to him, please. He’d be... very upset, if he knew what I was asking. Or Bård. I don't think he'd understand. And _certainly_ not Brynjar."_ _

__"Okay," he said. He considered. "It’s terrible what happened to Brynjar, but if you’ve got to keep a secret, now’s the time, I guess."_ _

__"I guess," she sighed._ _

__When Melantha had gone on her way, looking as if a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders, Vegard went to his phone. There were five new messages from Finn. He ignored them and found the message about the chocolate shop they supposed to visit next Wednesday, and replied to it. "Sorry, Wednesday's not a good idea, the way things are. Best to stay away right now." He should probably say something else. What explanation would set Finn at ease without giving anything away?_ _

__Then, brow furrowing, he went to the kitchen garbage. Nothing. But... He started digging through. It wasn't pleasant. Near the bottom he found the wadded-up ball of paper, and unrolled it. His stomach flipflopped. "IF YOU WANT TO STAY A NICE LITTLE FAMILY..."_ _

__Vegard crumpled the paper again and shoved it to the bottom of the garbage, breathing hard. Then with a sigh he fished it out again, unfolded it, got off his knees, and washed the chicken juice off his wrists and hands. He took a quick picture of the note with his phone before returning it to the trash. Then he washed his hands again. One thing at a time. As soon as he got his legal troubles sorted, he was going to find out who was threatening his friends. Until then, as much as he’d welcome the distraction, his presence would be a danger. For the moment, there was nothing but do what Melantha said._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Dissociatives' "Thinking in Reverse" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQy2R74j99Y


	11. A Comedy of Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sentence / A god-shaped hole

Late Monday morning, after dropping their youngest with his Auntie Maria, Helene drove Vegard to the courthouse in Ekeberg. As they parked, Vegard blinked out a lens, and closed the other eye. It was glamoured to look like a squat brown brick block. A sign, broken and rusty, hung from the twisted remains of metal supports. He read it, and then immediately forgot what it said. Nice touch. He put the lens back in, and opened both eyes on the soaring edifice of quartz and marble. Helene squeezed his hand. "Are you ready?"

"No," Vegard said with a small smile, but he still climbed the steps of the courthouse. 

A lios alfr in a lavender trenchcoat, in what Vegard was starting to recognize as an elven cut, emerged from behind a pillar and rushed towards him, trailed by a camerawoman. "Anja Laediel, Alpha News. Mr. Ylvisåker, do you have anything to say in your own defence?"

"I’d do it again," Vegard said into the microphone she was sticking in his face. "I’m not sorry."

Her eyes widened, but what she said was, "It seems like you’ve built a career out of attacking the values of the Bright Court. Are you trying to send a message?"

There were more microphones now. "My brother and I built our careers on making people laugh," Vegard protested wearily.

Another reporter demanded, "So this, blood magic, everything, it’s just a joke to you?"

He shook his head in frustration. "If you want to say that on your news shows, just say that. Don't try to make me say it. That's very poor interview technique, to not even listen to what I'm saying." He felt Helene tugging on his hand, but stayed put.

"If you _could_ send a message to the Bright Court, what would you say?"

Vegard laughed in spite of himself. "Eat your vegetables, get plenty of sleep, and stay in school." He let Helene draw him up the stairs then, and into the building.

More people flocked to him as he entered. Helene stepped out in front of him, eyes fierce, and pulled him by the hand to the courtroom.

Bård was waiting for him there, this time in a blue suit, his hair slicked back, his complexion chalky. With him was Benael Samriel, the advocate that Gisela had recommended. He was a lios alfr with ivory skin and long straight black hair. His suit was so dark that it seemed to swallow light. He took Vegard's hand in both of his own. "How are you two holding up?" he asked.

Vegard shrugged uncomfortably. Helene said, "We're managing."

"I was just telling your brother, we drew Judge Sumpfot," the advocate said. 

"Is that good?" Vegard asked.

"If you were Underjordiske, that would be very good indeed. Trickier to say with humans. Remember, though, just like we discussed. Be calm, be honest, and try, _try_ not to pun."

Vegard took his place in the chair next to Samriel, before the ornately decorated, gold-topped bench, with its massive ironwood throne. Did the judge really have to sit on that all day? It looked really uncomfortable. Helene and Bård sat behind him, on the other side of the bar, just beyond his reach. He turned back to give them a feeble smile, and surveyed the rest of the seats with alarm. He was used to big audiences, but not for something like this. "Are all these people here for me?" he demanded.

"Most of them," Samriel said. "There are a couple of cases on the docket after yours, but this is the big news today. Ignore them. Just focus on the task at hand."

In the antechamber, there was a heavy thud, as if someone had dropped an armful of books. Vegard startled, but no one else around him looked alarmed. The noise came again, and again, and again, and a lios alfr in cornflower blue said, "Rise for the venerable Judge Sumpfot."

The judge was a troll. Curious, Vegard popped a lens out again, and saw a large-boned white woman, her eyes made huge by thick glasses, her face a net of wrinkles, making her way haltingly to the bench. He put it back in, and both eyes showed him a hulking figure with a huge bulbous nose, eyes like buttons, and overlong arms the colour of clay poking out from beneath her robes.

"Be seated," she said in a voice that sounded like a landslide, and settled into the perfectly fitting ironwood chair, picking up files. "This is the sentencing hearing for Vegard Ylvisåker, who has pleaded guilty to, hm." She peered at him with her button eyes. " _Two_ counts of second-degree blood magic, in contravention of the Cleaner Magic Act. Hm. They’ve done the extraction spiel?"

"My client wishes to keep his magic intact," said Samriel.

"I see, Mr. Samriel. And you said something about mitigating circumstances?"

"As you’ll see in the documents I’ve prepared for you, Exhibits Twelve through Sixteen, the men on whom the magic was performed had just rendered a great service to the Samkoma and the Scandinavian people, and one of them was gravely injured."

Three lios alfar sat at the table on the other side of the centre aisle, and one of them said, "Your Magnificence, this isn’t about his victims. Mr. Ylvisåker is powerful enough that he committed the same offense twice, in rapid succession. In the weeks prior, he repeatedly flouted the law, and would probably have been in jail all this time had certain political interests not stepped in. He shows no remorse. If he is allowed to keep his magic, then he should be in jail for the rest of his life."

Behind him, Vegard heard both Bård and Helene suck in breath. Bård said, "Your Honour, may I speak?"

"No," said the judge. 

"Your Magnificence," said Samriel, "If you will consult Exhibits Six, Seven, and Eight, you will see that my client was given amnesty for his crimes precisely because he was being unjustly pursued, and acted in self defense."

"I’ve seen them. Mr. Ylvisåker, you and your brother couldn’t have come along quietly and let the system work?"

"They took us in," Vegard said, rubbing his collarbone vigorously, "and we told them we didn’t do anything wrong, and did the Seal of Luotettavuus thing to prove it, and they believed us and let us go. But the next day, they were after us again."

"Mr. Ylvisåker, you’re telling me the truth?"

"I am, Your Hon-- Your Magnificence, but you can do the Seal again if you want."

"What about the officer you assaulted in Padjelanta?"

"Your Magnificence, that has no bearing on the matter at hand," Samriel protested.

"I thought the avalanche would be far enough away to block their way and turn them back without hurting anyone," Vegard said, his eyes filling with tears. "But it caused another one. I should have known. And I am so sorry. If you want to, to add that... "

"No," Samriel said firmly.

"I will take it into consideration," Judge Sumpfot rumbled. "Does the defendant need a moment?"

"No, no," Vegard said, taking a few deep breaths and scrubbing at his eyes. "I’m good, I’m good."

She scanned her files. "Why did you come back?" When Vegard looked at her blankly, she said, "After Linnael Aruviel tried to kill you, you and your brother ceased all involvement with the elves and the Underjordiske for eight years. And then you plunged right back into the thick of things. What changed?"

"We forgot," Vegard said. "The spell on us wore off, and we forgot everything. But--" He glanced nervously around, hoping Melantha and Jessalyn were staying away. "--this past March some friends asked us for some help, and we had to say no, but people started following us. We couldn’t go home--it would be leading them straight to our families. We had to run, and learn to defend ourselves, and figure out how to fix things."

"You fled justice, got someone to teach you black magic, and entrapped a Samkoma Junior Magister," one of the prosecution team retorted.

The judge paged through her files. "Nothing in here indicates that any of the other magic the defendant performed was illicit in nature."

"Your Magnificence, no one gets that powerful through legitimate means."

"I’m not that powerful," Vegard said miserably, around his hand. 

"Hush, Mr. Ylvisåker. Speak when you’re spoken to." The judge kept turning pages. She looked up at Vegard once, eyebrows raised, and then looked back down. Finally she said--still studying his file--"Mr. Ylvisåker, would you kindly approach the bench?"

He got up, and stood across the bench from her. He had to crane his neck to meet her eyes. Samriel came too. "This is highly irregular, Your Magnificence," the advocate said.

"As it is highly irregular to have my courtroom clogged with vultures and vigilantes, Mr. Samriel." She made a noise like an earthquake, and flicked magic at Vegard. "There. Treat that like a Seal of Luotettavuus. You will speak no words not rooted in firm ground. Now, Mr. Ylvisåker, what is the purpose of magic?"

"To access a level of abstraction below the Planck Length and use the energy there to do things that you can’t do with... I guess, Newtonian physics? I know we have quantum physics too, but I don’t think that kicks in unless what you’re working with is very large, or very--"

She cut him off. "That’s fine. Where did you learn magic?"

"Please, do whatever you think is fair to me, but I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble."

"We _are_ figuring out what is fair to you, Mr. Ylvisåker."

An annoyed voice came from the prosecution’s table. "Your Magnificence!"

"If it was permitted for Judge Xaniel, surely it is permitted for me."

"That was a drunk casting case!"

Samriel had turned around. "That defendant turned two people inside out! Everyone lived this time, _because _of the very deed my client is being sentenced for!"__

__The judge beat massive palms together. "Matter at hand, Mr. Samriel. Mr. Ylvisåker, I will ask you again. Where did you learn magic?"_ _

__"A friend of a friend," Vegard sighed, running his fingers along his lower lip. "She gave me a crash course in an afternoon, because she thought I might have a knack for it, and I wanted to learn to defend myself against the people chasing us."_ _

__"You started with no magic, and she taught you how to defend yourself in one afternoon?"_ _

__He shook his head. "Just magic. Like, the very basics. I had to figure out what to do with it myself. It’s not much, I swear."_ _

__"And who taught you blood magic?"_ _

__"Somebody I d--" He’d been about to say it was somebody he didn’t know, but his knees buckled as a tremendous weight in the pit of his stomach suddenly dragged him to the ground. Samriel caught him, waited a few moments, and then set him upright, where he said, "No one _taught_ me. Somebody healed me when I was hurt, and I took a picture of the glyph they used because it seemed like it would come in handy."_ _

__"Hm," the judge said. "All right. Return to your seats."_ _

__When Vegard got back, Helene’s face was tight with worry. He took his hand away from his mouth and gave her a smile that he hoped was reassuring._ _

__"Is the prosecution going to offer a victim impact statement?" Judge Sumpfot asked._ _

__"The prosecution concedes that there is little utility in asking either of the victims to make a statement," one of the prosecutors, a plump lios alfr woman, said quietly._ _

__“Then I’ll hear your closing statements, thank you.”_ _

__"Your Magnificence," said another of them, the lios alfr man who'd kept complaining while Vegard was at the bench. He rose from his chair. "We are _all_ victims of Vegard Ylvisåker. He has demonstrated nothing but contempt for our system, for our laws, for _blood_ \--the stuff of life itself." He was staring off into the distance, and Vegard suddenly twigged that this was for the cameras. "When he unleashed those two _things_ on us, he had no way of knowing how they might react to freedom. Whether they might want revenge. He gambled with all of our lives--every single one of us. Is it hatred of us that made him do what he did? Or does he simply not care? I, for one, don't want to risk the lives of our children to find out." The man gave a firm nod to the camera, and sat._ _

__"Thank you, Mr. Ciredael. Does the defence wish to make a closing statement?"_ _

__"Your Magnificence," Samriel said, standing, "my client is still very new to the magical world. At the time he performed the magic in question, he had no memory of his prior involvement with elvenkind, and had, effectively, only three weeks of experience with magic. He was under extreme stress, and he made a mistake, which he freely admits to making. A court-ordered course and community service would best serve the cause of justice here."_ _

__As Samriel sat, Vegard glared at him, and tugged his sleeve, leaning over to whisper. Samriel shook his head, and motioned with his chin to the bench._ _

__Judge Sumpfot rang the little silver bell on the bench. "I will return with my verdict in fifteen minutes." She got up and clumped out the broad door to the side._ _

__When she was gone, Samriel turned to him. "Why did you say it was a mistake?" Vegard whispered. "It wasn't a mistake. How many times do I have to say, my--my... he was _dying!_ " The tears were coming again, and he didn't bother to wipe them away. "You should have said, it doesn't matter how they'd react to freedom, because people shouldn't be on a leash anyway."_ _

__"Calm down, Mr. Ylvisåker. Calm down. Come on, Vegard, calm down."_ _

__Vegard rubbed his chest, and made himself take deep breaths, and tried to stop shaking. He sought out Bård, through their link, but his brother was just as agitated as he was. Not a lot of help there._ _

__When he'd been quiet for a little while, Samriel said, gently, "No matter what they did for you, no matter who they were or are to you, no matter whether the law is fair or not, it's not my job to champion the cause of changelings. It's my job to get you the lightest sentence possible. Now, I want you to look at me, all right? Look at me."_ _

__Vegard glanced up at him with puffy red eyes, and then back down again._ _

__Samriel brushed a tear from Vegard's cheek, used it to paint something on his forehead, and then blew on it. Vegard sagged suddenly. The tension drained from his body, and with it, all of his energy. "Just a little soothing spell," Samriel explained._ _

__Vegard touched clumsy fingers to the glyph on his forehead. "How is _that_ okay?" he wondered aloud, as his eyes drifted closed._ _

__The silver bell startled him into wakefulness. He sat bolt upright, and after a moment of disorientation, focused on Judge Sumpfot, who had resumed her seat._ _

__"Glad to have you back with us, Mr. Ylvisåker," she said. "Having taken all of the evidence into account, on the charges of second-degree blood magic, this court sentences you to a period of ninety days in Innilokun Ríki, to be followed by a Samkoma-sanctioned course in responsible spell-casting."_ _

__Helene exhaled; Vegard inhaled. There were angry-sounding murmurs around the court. "But--" Bård cried, and Judge Sumpfot hurled a gesture at him. Bård fell silent, but Vegard could feel his panic and dismay._ _

__"You have two days to get your affairs in order. On Wednesday officers of this court will collect you from your residence, to begin your sentence. Until that time, your bail conditions still apply. Do you understand, Mr. Ylvisåker?"_ _

__Vegard inclined his head, and said, "Thank you, Your Hon-- Your Magnificence. I know that could have been a lot worse."_ _

__"You're an intelligent man, Mr. Ylvisåker. A gifted man. Take this opportunity to learn to wisely use what you have been given." She struck the bell again. "So I say. Circus is over, people. We reconvene in an hour for the Bredører case."_ _

__Before she had finished speaking, the courtroom erupted into heated conversation. Vegard sat for a little while, head in hands, concentrating on breathing in and out. Finally, when some of the din had faded, he lifted his head. "Three months isn’t so bad," he said to no one in particular._ _

__"Do you want another spell?" Samriel asked._ _

__"No, no. Please. Not again. Thank you. For everything." Vegard pushed himself to his feet, feeling a bit like he had in August. Shrugging off Samriel's offer of a hand, he walked around the bar to where Bård and Helene had stood up._ _

__There were microphones in his face again. "Mr. Ylvisåker, how do you feel about the verdict?"_ _

__"Tired," Vegard said, and turned away from them. Helene and Bård put their arms around him, and walked him out. Reporters trailed after, and were ignored. It sounded, behind them, like Samriel was running interference, saying something about a reasonable outcome, but Vegard couldn't block out their raucous voices. Sounds were too loud, and when they reached the doors, even the overcast sky was too bright._ _

__When they left the steps of the courthouse, Bård suddenly let out a shout. They all stopped short. Vegard checked him reflexively through their link, and was surprised to find relief and indignation predominant._ _

__"She gagged me," Bård panted, shuddering. Vegard squeezed Bård's shoulders, and Bård turned around and hugged him tight, his chin digging into the crook of Vegard's neck. "In the courtroom. The judge. It just let go just now." Vegard disengaged, but Bård kept both hands on his shoulders, gulping air. "She can't send you to _jail_. You didn't do anything wrong. What are we going to do? We're in the middle of a season. We've got to think of something!"_ _

__Helene smiled a sweet, brittle smile and pried Bård away from Vegard, digging her fingers into his ulnar nerve until he let go with a hiss of pain. "You are going to wait here, and take deep breaths, and calm the hell down. I am going to get the car."_ _

__"Varggrav," Vegard said, closing his eyes. "The Nook and Cranny. Remember?"_ _

__Bård seemed to get it. As Helene got the car, they stood together at the base of the courthouse stairs, as they had sat together in a hole-in-the-wall bar nine months ago, passing a wave of calm back and forth along the invisible thread that linked them._ _

____

***

"Hey, are you gonna pay for that?"

Brynjar let the evening edition of the _Alpha Chronicle_ fall closed. "OUTRAGE," the headline screamed, "90-DAY SENTENCE FOR YLVISÅKER IN BLACK MAGIC FIASCO." Underneath that, subheadlines speculated about moral decay and whether or not trolls were truly fit to be judges, and said that in response to the news Aurindael Nimarael had made minimum sentencing part of his platform. Brynjar was curious--made in the image of a curious man, he thought bitterly, regretting everything he'd said--but he would not give Alpha his money. He nodded at the shop owner, who seemed discomposed by his limp and his bad eye, and lurched out into the November afternoon. 

There was a bench not too far away, and he stopped there to rest. The day was chill and damp, but the exertion had left him pouring with sweat. 

What was he going to do? The group had talked, obviously. They’d worked it out. He'd angered them, and they'd told the authorities. 

He should just stop asserting himself, was what he should do. Nothing good ever came of it. Even if the thought of the years of his life ticking by, measured in increments of visits to that church basement, filled him with soul-deep horror. 

He put a hand he could barely feel anymore to a face he could barely feel anymore, and, under trees he could barely feel anymore, next to a river he could barely feel anymore, he cried. 

He had submitted the final round of paperwork in his application for standing on Friday and gone to the hospital on Saturday, not so much because he thought they could help as because other people seemed to require confirmation that they couldn’t. The doctor, a young half-svartalfr half-djinni, had told him that, as Brynjar had suspected, they could do nothing. He had a hole in his brain, and his godhead had taken up the space. If he'd given up his divinity while he was still biologically a changeling--the doctor had been very matter-of-fact about this, which was a relief--then the lattices might still have been able to fill it in, and give him back some of the functionality he'd just lost. Maybe more, because divinity was tricky by nature. But as a human, he just had a bunch of destroyed brain tissue. She recommended physiotherapy. If Brynjar could afford it, NUA was having very good luck with mirroring spell networks, set under his skin, that would make the muscles on his left side do what the muscles on his right side were doing, but they were still experimental and ridiculously expensive right now, and they were an either/or prospect: if he got them, he would be giving up the remainder of his voluntary control over those muscles. He had rejected the idea out of hand, but upon reflection, it might be a good thing for his face and tongue, depending on how those were doing by the time the show aired. He would see how physio went, he supposed.

The young woman got very close to him before she entered the range of vision of the working eye. He let out a little yip, and flinched.

She was human, plump, with long curly black hair, and wore a suede skirt and sweater under a pink fall jacket with roses embroidered on the cuffs. "I didn't mean to startle you," she said, sitting down next to Brynjar on the bench. She handed him a tissue. "Are you okay?"

He opened his mouth to speak, and closed it. To the extent that he had a choice, he would not give the group the power to poison his other interactions. He dried his eyes. "Dost thou wantest me to be polite, or honest?"

"Honest," she said, her narrow dark eyes flashing a little.

"Then no," he said, turning to meet her gaze. 

"What’s wrong?"

He thought for a little while. "Has you ever gived something up because everyone around you say it was a good idea, and then discovered it were a deeper part of you than you known?"

"Yeah," she said quietly, looking away. Then: "Whatever it is that you feel like you lost, I can show you something better."

"Can you?"

"The hole inside you... you may not know it, but it’s a God-shaped hole."

"I knows it. Believing me."

"Would you like to fill it?"

"With all of my hearts," Brynjar said, and let himself be drawn up, fitting his arm into the brace of his cane. 

"I'm Seohee," she said, as he lurched along beside her. 

"Brynjar," he panted, offering his good hand.

They shook. "I was so lost when my parents moved here with me," she told him. "I did some things... made some poor decisions, hoping that people would like me. The people where we’re going showed me, there's only one kind of approval that matters."

"Which kind are that?" Brynjar asked, when it became clear that she was waiting for him to ask. He missed being able to see that sort of thing.

"God's."

"So... this make your life better, truly?"

"It doesn't make my life easier," she said carefully. "It doesn’t make me rich, or healthy, or get me good grades. But it changes the way the world looks to me. It changes what the world _means_. All the things I've done that I regret, I have forgiveness for. All the things I want that I know aren't good for me, I have extra reasons for avoiding--reasons that are bigger than just me."

"That sound... very promising," Brynjar murmured.

"It's something I like to share with people," Seohee said. "I don't want to beat anyone over the head with it, but it's there if you want it."

"I has had, lately, much congress with gods that were not good for me. It are a deep relief to hearing of someone's good experience."

"There’s only one that you can trust. That's what the sermon is on today: trust. Pastor Lim is an excellent speaker. You'll like him."

"Thou art so right. I should had trusted. Only one knoweth me through and through."

The church was mercifully close. The pastor, a rotund man with an easy smile and a gentle handshake, welcomed them warmly and conducted them to an elevator. It was very slow, but it was quicker than stairs. 

With great relief, Brynjar sank down in a pew in the back, admiring the intricately carved pulpit, and the fragile beauty of the light fixtures. Next to him, Seohee paged through a Bible, opening it to the Book of Job. "Here's the text for today." She perched the Bible upside down on his knee.

People filed in, some of them greeting Seohee. She introduced Brynjar to them, couples and kids and teens and an old granny who called her by the wrong name, and Brynjar shook their hands, although the parade of unfamiliar names quickly exceeded his capacity to remember.

Pastor Lim greeted the congregation, and began to speak about the Book of Job. He spoke about a wager--this was one of the texts that had been in his implants, and what Seohee had said notwithstanding, Brynjar thought that was pretty bad business--and about Job's ensuing misfortunes, his cry for justice. The pastor extemporized for a long time. Then he quoted God’s reply. Brynjar picked up the Bible, and followed along:

" _Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?  
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?  
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.   
Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof,  
That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?_"

As the pastor read, Brynjar’s eyes opened very wide, and half of his face lit up. "Yes," he murmured. "Yes, of course, yes."

"What is it?" Seohee whispered. "Have you found Him?"

"Yes," Brynjar breathed. "Yes! No. Wait. Sorry. Pronouns. I has found _Me_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Emerson Lake & Palmer's "Knife Edge" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrUkKNVTzTE


	12. Bait and Switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stand-in / Downhill / A favour, refused / A favour, granted / What they wanted / Heavy lifting / The collectors / Finn gets a haircut / How to blend in with humans #4: fidgeting

When Bård arrived at the office at 09.15, Vegard was there, hunched in front of his computer, frowning at a spreadsheet. 

Bård leaned against the doorframe. "I don't understand how you can be so sanguine about this," he said. 

"I'm scared as hell," Vegard told him without looking up. "But I knew it was illegal when I did it. And these are the consequences." He spun his chair around to face him. "It's a little thing, Bård. Finn was ready to give up his life for me, and he really didn't have a choice about it."

"I've noticed that now that he does have a choice, he's nowhere to be seen," Bård said bitterly.

"He’s about to be granted standing, and his girlfriend is pregnant after a miscarriage, _and_ he’s got his own show coming up," Vegard said.

"None of that is an excuse!"

"They’re all good reasons, though," Vegard said. "I'm okay with it. Really, I, I don't even want him near any of this. I’d feel really bad if he were, especially if anything went wrong. But speaking of lookalikes, what did Jacek say?"

Bård shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't ask him yet."

"Bård!"

"I couldn’t ask him to commit without a time frame, and I was really hoping you wouldn't do any time for this. And, and I don't even know... I've always said, I don't _want_ anyone else to co-host."

"We talked about this!" Vegard protested. "You agreed, remember?"

"Very reluctantly, _if_ there were no other options, but it feels _weird_. We can't just replace you with Vegek for a whole month, either. People will still ask questions, and I still won't have answers for them."

"It's not safe," Vegard said quietly.

"I think we should--"

"It's _not safe._ "

"--just call Finn. He _owes_ you."

"Bård, it's not safe!"

"You keep saying that, and I don't understand why."

Vegard patted the table in frustration. "Because, because I'm supposed to be in jail! And what will they do if they see someone who looks just like me?"

"They'll check to see you're still in jail, I would imagine. Look, law enforcement knows about your changeling. They know you made him human and they can't touch him, or they would have already. They'll figure it out."

"And what about the people who aren't in law enforcement, who still feel comfortable enforcing the law?"

"Oh, I'll look out for Vegolas," Bård promised. "I think you're being silly. There's a perfectly good Vegard substitute right here, _who was made to be a Vegard substitute_ , and you haven't even approached him."

"He's got his own life," Vegard said sulkily.

"Does he even know about any of this?"

Vegard shrugged. "What he's read in the papers, probably. I've really wanted to keep clear of him."

"Why? Did something happen?"

"No, no, nothing like that. I just want him to be safe. This whole thing I'm going to jail for, I did it because he was in danger. It doesn’t make sense to put him in danger now."

Bård put a hand on his wrist. "I'll look out for him. I promise."

***

Breathing hard, colour high, Debbie approached the top of the hill, skis making a herringbone pattern behind her in the snow.

They'd warned her about skiing out here. It had been a particularly bad season so far: six people had been found dead in skiing accidents or in falls in this area. Four more were missing, presumed dead in avalanches. The staff at Skogadalsbøen Lodge had strongly advised her to travel with a buddy, but she shared a dorm room and shared a classroom and shared tables at the library and if she didn’t get time in her head soon she was going to start screaming and not stop. So she promised them that she would stick to gentle slopes and stay well away from avalanche territory, and they hadn’t been happy, but this trip wasn’t for them anyway.

And as she crested the hill, she was glad. The sky was clear, the sun bathing the distant peaks of the Hurrungane in liquid light. _This_ was what she was here for: the smell of the air, the rush of wind against her cheeks, the ache of well-used muscles, the breathtaking view, and the sweet, sweet solitude.

She was already on her way down, her skis hissing through the snow, when she saw that there was something a couple of valleys over. She stared for a long time, trying to make sense of it, before it occurred to her that it might be safer to snowplow to a stop and contemplate it from afar. 

This was the last thought that went through her head. There wasn't even time for shock or fear; she died happy, at least. She would never understand what had happened to her, and neither would the park rangers who found her body.

***

"Jacek? Hello. It's Vegard Ylvisåker, from _Tonight With Ylvis_. You remember?"

"Of course I remember," Jacek said jovially. "It's good to hear from you, my friend. I'm surprised; I think that you would be getting ready for your show."

"We are, we are," Vegard said, checking the time reflexively. Still good. "But I called because I have a pretty big favour to ask. I know it’s not a lot of notice, but it will be very well compensated. Would you be able to come up and co-host the show for a month?"

There was a silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Jacek said, "Just me? Not the others?"

"Just you. I've got to, to go and take care of something that can't wait until the hiatus."

"My friend, are you all right?"

Vegard hoped his laugh didn't sound as fake as it felt. "I will be if I can find someone to sit in my chair."

"Vegard, I... wish I could do this for you. But this month, I cannot. If you had asked with more time, I could make, I could have made some plans, but I have my new job now, and if I leave they will not be so ready to take me back. I am so sorry."

"Of course," Vegard said. "No, of course, I understand."

"Are you all right? What has happened?"

"I... did a favour for my cousin last spring, because he needed it very fast. A little while ago I learned it wasn’t settled completely. So I have to settle it, you know? And it can't wait until the show is over." There. The truth, in a way that wouldn't offend Jacek's ex-cop sensibilities. 

The silence was shorter this time, but heavier. "Vegard, please, are you in danger?"

Vegard tried to sound dismissive. "No, no. It's not dangerous. But it will take me out of Oslo for a little while. No big deal." And then he changed the subject by asking about Jacek's new job and his wife and son. 

He thought he was in the clear until the conversation wound up. "Vegard, be very very careful," Jacek said solemnly. "You are a good guy. I wish I could help you. I worry about you. This sounds... bad. Be careful."

"I will," Vegard promised. When he ended the call, he observed that his hand was shaking. He sat for a little while in the dim light of his dressing room before venturing out to give Bård the news.

***

Finn was waiting for the tram, with groceries he'd picked up on the way back from meeting the support group, when his phone rang. Bård! And when Finn picked up, Bård said the words Finn had been waiting to hear. "We need your help."

"You want me to take Vegard’s place?" he said eagerly.

There was a hesitation, and Bård said, "Yeah."

"Okay!" Finn said. "Yes! Okay. I can do this!" 

Bård didn’t sound nearly as relieved as Finn had expected. He sounded unbelievably tired. "Can you?"

"Yes, absolutely. Believe me, it's the least I can do."

"Yeah."

"Just tell me when to show up," Finn said.

"Can I pick you up tomorrow night at eight?"

" _Eight?_ "

"Yeah. Why?"

"It just seemed like... not the time I was expecting."

"Well, you can't just go and do this, Finn. We need to get you ready."

"I understand," Finn said. "No, I understand. I can do this. I'll need to talk to Melly, but it'll be okay. Well... can _you_ make sure she's okay?"

"I'll call Melantha," Bård said. "You don't worry about that."

"Okay, Bård. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll see you tomorrow at eight."

"Thanks, Finn."

"Thank you for giving me the chance. Break a leg tonight."

Finn had missed a tram while he was talking, but the extra wait would give Bård time to talk to Melantha. And give Finn time to think what to say what to her. She would be upset, naturally, rightly, but Finn had more faith in Bård's persuasive abilities than in his own. And it would only be for a short time. 

He realized, bleakly, that if she was going to miscarry again, this month was probably when it would happen. And she would need him. He would need her. What if he'd just made a horrible mistake, saying he would do this? Then again, it seemed terribly selfish to begrudge Vegard this one thing. He took deep breaths, and by the time the next tram came he'd managed to calm his hammering heart, if not his racing mind.

***

Bård put away his phone with a heavy sigh. He turned to Vegard. "The douche is strong with that one."

"Oh," Vegard said, and then his brow furrowed. "It sounded from your half like he'd said he would."

"Well, yeah, he will. But he's being a douchebag about it. He's like, 'Oh, you want me to replace Vegard? I can do that!'"

"That's what we wanted, isn't it?"

"He didn't have to sound so happy about it. And I'm the one who gets to talk to Melantha."

Vegard checked his own phone. "You have a good five minutes. I'll be out with the food. Magnus and Calle might start to wonder about us."

"God, this is heavy. I don't want to do this right now." Then Bård realized he was talking to a man who was going to prison the next day. "Sorry. Sorry. Go hang out. Laugh. Build up a good atmosphere. I'll try to soak it up when I'm done here."

***

When Finn walked in the door, the only thing keeping his nerves at bay was the discomfort of the shopping bag handles digging into his fingers. Melantha met him at the door, and wonder of wonders, she was smiling. "Finn," she said, moving to take the bags from him, and he snatched them away instinctively. She wasn't supposed to be lifting heavy things. "Bård just called," she said. "Oh, put those down. He told me what you're going to do."

"And?" Finn said in a small voice, setting the bags down at his feet. The mustard rolled out. He wasn't going to go after it just yet, but then he thought of her stepping on it, falling... He corralled it with the shoe he was in the midst of taking off, and drew it back to the bag.

"I think it's fabulous. I'm so proud of you."

"You do?" he said. "I mean... thank you! I'm glad. I'm worried about you, though. What if something happens? What if you need me, and I'm not there?"

"I can always call Jessalyn, and she'll be here on the double. Bård said I can also call Maria and Helene. And if all else fails, there's Mama."

He took her hands, and drew her knuckles to his lips. "You're really okay with this?"

"I really, really am, sweetness. You go out there, and you be the best Vegard you can be."

***

Vegard had a small gym bag packed. He had ten pairs of boxer briefs, socks, toiletries, an electric razor, trainers, flipflops for the shower, a chamois for a towel, gloves and a wool cap, a thick notebook and a pen, a small photo album, three fleece tops, earplugs, paperback copies of _Flight: The Complete History_ and _1400 Simple Glyphs for Beginners_ , a battery-powered radio, a little kalimba, and a cheap watch. He'd told Helene this morning that it felt a little like packing for his military service. Except this time they probably weren't going to let him have a gun.

Their two eldest were at school. They knew he was going to be gone for a little while. The time Vegard had to spend away from his family had always felt like the most arduous part of his job, but now Helene was grateful for it: work had taken him away often enough that now they could be a little bit vague about why he was going this time. There would be no Facetime, but there would be letters. Every day, if he could manage it, he said, and he'd managed to say goodbye to them this morning without tearing up. 

Now he and Helene sat playing with their youngest boy in the sun-washed living room. Vegard had a dinosaur and Helene had a toy car. They were on the floor side by side, giving the toys voices and giggling, when the doorbell rang.

Helene felt like the air had gone out of the room. The colour drained from Vegard's face, and he scrambled to his feet and grabbed his bag. She stood with him, scooping their little boy into her arms. 

"Just a moment," Vegard called over his shoulder. He embraced Helene, holding her and the little one for a long moment.

Then the doorbell rang again, and someone hammered on the door. With a sigh, Vegard kissed Helene's temple, and went to the door to answer it.

Four people stood there. They didn't look like dálki officers; they looked like salespeople. A smiling brown-haired woman with a suit and a clipboard stepped forward. "Mr. Ylvisåker, are you ready to pay your debt?"

He nodded. "Come on in," he said, and stepped back to admit them before closing the door behind them. He put on his hoodie and his coat, and then stooped to put on boots. When he straightened up, he hugged Helene and the baby one more time and gave her a last kiss. "Be brave," he whispered. 

"You too," she said. When a fair man in a suit took Vegard's bag and a blonde woman in a pink pencil skirt spun him around to put silver shackles on his wrists, she said, "Is that really necessary?"

"Don't worry," said the woman with the clipboard. "No one will see." And then they were gone... just gone, all of them, and Vegard with them.

"Vegard?" Helene said softly. They were still in here with her, they had to be. "I love you."

She had no doubt that if he had heard, he had answered, but she herself heard nothing. There was no sign of him. 

She stood by the door for a long time, eyes darting to and fro, waiting for it to open and let them out. She waited. And waited. And waited. The little one started to cry, and she jogged him up and down a little bit, and paced with him. 

Helene glanced at the clock, and saw that ten minutes had gone by. She didn't know how they could have gotten past her without opening the door, but the house was still, and she couldn't _feel_ anyone there besides her son.

She wandered back into the living room, where a few minutes ago everything had been fine. The dinosaur and the toy car lay where they'd fallen, and she gathered them up and put them away, and settled down to have a good cry before the kids came home. 

Three months. It was going to be okay, but god, this sucked.

***

At eight-fifteen, Bård pulled up to the house in Ekeberg in his Corolla. Finn got in. Bård didn't look happy to see him. "What's all that stuff for?"

"I don't know what I can take," Finn said sheepishly, stowing the small gym bag in the back. It contained ten pairs of briefs, socks, toiletries, flipflops, a towel, gloves and a wool cap, his spare pair of glasses, a journal and a pen, a stationery set, five skribs, two sweaters, earplugs, paperback copies of _Gravity's Rainbow_ and _Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell_, and a set of pipes. "Just... stuff I thought I might need, if I'm allowed."

"Fine. Let’s get going."

Bård pointed the car north. Finn wished his cousin would say something, anything, but if he wanted to talk that badly he should say something himself, shouldn’t he? "How... Um. How are you?"

Bård shrugged. "About how you’d expect, I guess."

"Maria and the kids all right?"

"Holding up."

"It’s going to be okay," Finn promised.

Bård's lips twisted momentarily. "Yeah."

He took them to Grünnerløkka, and found street parking. "Should I take my bag?" Finn asked.

Bård shook his head. "You won't need it here." He took Finn to a grey four-storey building that had a rainbow flag near one of the entrances, and knocked. 

A stocky bald man with a fringe of beard and kind eyes opened the door. "Thanks for agreeing to see us after hours," Bård said. "We needed someone we knew could be discreet."

"Always a pleasure to see you, Bård," said Vidar Myklebust, waving them through the door of his salon. "And--?"

"Finn," Finn said, sticking out a hand.

"Vidar," Vidar said, taking the hand in both of his own. "You carry yourselves very differently, but the physical resemblance between you and Bård's brother is quite striking."

"Not a coincidence," Bård said. "We, uh, need you to give him Vegard's hair."

"I'll do what I can," Vidar promised. "Let's see what I have to work with?"

In the salon's slightly baroque interior, Finn pushed back the hood on his hoodie. He'd been keeping his hair much longer than Vegard's, and tonight he was solving the too-much-body-at-the-sides problem with a braid at each temple. Then everything was gathered into a ponytail and tied back with a neat red ribbon. 

"Very nice," Vidar said. He undid the braids, and washed Finn's hair. Bård asked him about the business, and a couple of conventions, and they chatted for a few minutes before Vidar said, "Finn, do you know much about the shop?"

"I saw the episode of _Norway’s Most Wonderful_ ," Finn said with a small smile as Vidar ushered him into the chair. That was a lie, technically. He had never seen it, but the people who had made him had implanted virtually every television appearance that Ylvis had done.

As he cut and shaped Finn’s hair, Vidar had a knack for keeping the conversation going without asking snoopy questions. Finn found himself relaxing. This was going to be all right. He just had to get through it, and everyone around him had his back. He appreciated Bård taking him to Vidar, an artisan who would work hard to put him at ease, when probably no one would care if it was a 170-kroner haircut at Hårfix. 

When Vidar took the cape off him with a flourish, Finn looked in the mirror, and Vegard’s face looked back at him. "Oh, my," he said. "Mr. Myklebust, this is incredible."

Vidar chuckled, and so did Bård. "Thank you, Finn. And just call me Vidar."

Bård paid and shrugged off Finn's thanks, and then they were getting back into the Corolla. Finn felt a flutter of dread as he climbed back into the passenger seat, and Bård started the car again. 

They crossed the bridge, and were in Ila. "Now we're going to... where I'll be spending my... time?"

"Most of it," Bård agreed wryly. He pulled into a parking lot. 

Finn grabbed his bag and got out, following Bård with a growing sense of apprehension. Then he stopped short at the door Bård indicated. "Concorde," he breathed, sagging momentarily against the doorframe before going through.

Bård led him up the stairs and into the office. "Toilets are here. Break room here. Here's my office. Here's yours."

"Okay," Finn said in a small voice. He put his bag just inside the door.

"Well, come on," Bård said, a little impatiently. "If you're going to pull this off, you have to look like you know your way around tomorrow."

Vegard's Mac desktop machine was sitting there. Finn sat down in front of it and woke it up. "This is Vegard's computer," he said wonderingly. 

"Imagine that! Vegard's computer in Vegard's office. Will wonders never cease? He spent all week putting together files for you, so you'd know what to do."

Finn clicked one of them. It was an Excel spreadsheet. "How do I even...?"

Bård shrugged. "He thinks in spreadsheets. Hell, you're really lost, aren't you? Okay..." Peering over Finn's shoulder in the darkened office, he showed him how Excel worked, and how to read the information that Vegard had set out.

"He left all this for me," Finn breathed. "Did he know that he was leaving it for me?"

"We hoped," Bård said. He took Vegard’s phone from his pocket, and gave it to Finn.

"Is he... did he already go?"

"This afternoon."

"Is he angry at me?"

"I would imagine he’s a bit jealous right about now," Bård said.

"I didn’t want him to go to jail," Finn told him.

"None of us did, but there he is," Bård said, sounding weary. "If you want to help him now, make sure he has a career to come back to when he gets out."

***

It seemed to have taken sitting him down in front of the computer to do it, but Finn was _finally_ acting like he understood the size of the shoes he was being asked to fill. And not a moment too soon for Bård, who had been just about ready to throttle him.

After he was satisfied that Finn knew his way around the spreadsheets, Bård drilled him on the names of the other people who worked in the office at Concorde, and where they sat. He explained the rhythm of the office, the rehearsals, the filming of each week’s show. Starting tomorrow, they had five days to get ready.

Bård realized, then, that he was forgetting two very important things. First, he snapped a picture of Finn with his phone, and breathed a sigh of relief. He was human enough to show up clearly in the picture; the glamour that surrounded magical creatures and made them unfilmable no longer affected him. If it had, he supposed they could have made an emergency call to Kai, and gotten a rush delivery on some glamcam lenses, but they wouldn't have to. 

Then he asked Finn to sing for him. He didn’t recognize Finn’s song choice, didn’t even recognize the language that it was sung in, but it was a beautiful piece that required a large vocal range and even had a couple of melismas, and after a shaky first ten seconds (during which Bård still thought he could work with what Finn had), he seemed to find his footing and his voice took hold and soared in a way that Vegard would have been satisfied with. 

"Sorry," Finn said after. He was looking really shaken now. "It’s been months since I’ve tried to sing in front of anyone."

"No, that’s okay, that’s good. Most of that was really good, and if you’re practicing regularly and warming up you’ll be fine." He stared, then, until it was clear that Finn was starting to feel discomposed. Bård said, slowly, "You’ll need to fidget more. Chew gum. And scratch more. Absently, you know?" He demonstrated by rubbing his hand along his jawline, then the back of his neck, then down to his collarbone. "That sort of thing. And this." He demonstrated Vegard’s various lip-rubbing techniques, and scratched his nose. 

"Okay, yeah, I’ve seen him do that." Finn copied some of the movements.

Bård stood. "Hug?"

Finn threw his arms around Bård and clung to him. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Bård said, stepping back. "Just, make it quicker. A tight little squeeze, for a man, with a bit of distance between you. Thump me on the back a little? Like that. Good. If it's a woman, then be a bit gentler and a bit closer. There. Okay. When you touch someone, be firm. Not, like, rough, but firm. And if strangers touch you, or if I get your attention by just putting my hands on your shoulders and pointing you somewhere, try not to startle or flinch."

"Right. I’m gonna need to get used to that in showbiz, right?"

"And your earrings need to come out."

For the barest second, Finn looked like he wanted to fight him on this. Then he sighed, turned away, and began to take out the tiny gold rings that, until two hours ago, had been covered by his hair. He laid each one down on Vegard’s desk. "Look if you like," he said huskily.

Bård picked one up. It had a word engraved into the gold, in plain block letters: "ODIN BORRSSON." Was this a religious thing? He picked up another. "CORVIEL RANDIEL." And another. He snorted when he saw the last name. "Who's Conrad Aruviel?"

Finn's back stiffened. Quietly, he said, "He would have been my son."

Bård put the earring down in a hurry. "Sorry." Then he said, "Look... if you wanted to leave that one in... I think we could--"

"No," Finn said. "I mean... thank you, Bård. But it doesn't work that way. I talked to some svartalfar before I did this, about the right way to do it. And it doesn't work that way." He took out the last of the earrings--Bård did not look at this one--and after a moment’s thought arranged them, writing side out, in the little well of the monitor stand. His fingers brushed them gently before he turned back to Bård. "Satisfaction?"

Bård gave his shoulder a pat. "Yeah." He observed, "You’re starting to sound like Brynjar."

Finn twisted in his chair and looked up, smiling weakly. "Yeah? And you’re rubbing your upper lip."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Lizzy Borden's "Master of Disguise" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUV2PGy2YIQ
> 
> I keep forgetting to add, if anyone wants anything tagged, please let me know. I might not put it in the main tags, to avoid spoilers, but I can do it chapter by chapter.


	13. Finn Does Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brit’s book of dinosaurs / Need / A ball, a net, and a stick / Brynjar’s ride home / Per Kristtorn takes a phone call / A noticeable absence / Third warning

Six days later, _Tonight With Ylvis_ debuted with its new co-host, in front of an unknowing audience of fourteen hundred. Bård had rehearsed Finn within an inch of his life. Fortunately, as a changeling he'd been programmed to suck up information on how to behave convincingly, and as a human he'd retained enough of that ability to make him a quick study. He had all of Vegard's skills already, and a programmed memory of all his previous performances. He copied Vegard's mannerisms and dialect, remembered his cues, and nailed the song. If anyone noticed that he was a little off, that his posture had shifted slightly, that when he listened to someone or concentrated on something there was a subtle change in the set of his head and the expression in his eyes, no one said anything.

One week down. Three to go.

The election happened the next day. Aurindael Nimarael was voted in by a substantial margin. Gisela Freidag kept her seat, barely, but svartalfar politicians in Stavanger, Trondheim, and Tromsø lost their magisteriates to lios alfar, mostly Bright young things who spoke a great deal about personal responsibility. Finn couldn't help but notice that they seemed to see it as something that _other_ people should be taking.

Finn hoped privately that in March, when his own show debuted, he'd be able to make more of a difference. Right now, caught up in _Tonight With Ylvis_ , he didn't have a lot of free time. With the broadcast on Tuesday night, he couldn't even turn to his group for support or advice. He'd e-mailed Anna, though, and she had been very understanding.

Three days in, he had grown heartily sick of the taste of Pepsi Max. Instead, now, he drank one in the morning, and kept the bottle filled with well-sugared coffee the rest of the day. He chewed a lot of gum to keep the worst of it off his breath. He longed to get to know Calle, who Vegard spoke so well of, but he knew Calle would know the difference, and studiously avoided him instead. He read Wikipedia articles about airplanes and tried to memorize things he thought Vegard would know, and being very busy was the only thing that kept him from being desperately lonely. 

He had to do _something_. Everything had gone sour. Bård was weird and distant. Vegard was in jail. Brynjar was lying low, communicating only by text and e-mail, and being very vague about his whereabouts. When he thought about it, all of the air seemed to go out of the office. Something was going to have to change.

He spent part of Saturday scanning the _Dagbladet_ site archives. It gave him a name, and a handful of phone calls gave him a room number at a hospital. 

Finn missed his longer hair and glasses and earrings and the other visual markers of being himself very keenly, but he had to admit that looking like Vegard Ylvisåker opened a lot of doors that would have been closed to Finn Weber. On Sunday, he showed up at the hospital with a teddy bear. A smiling human nurse said she would see if Brit was in the mood for a visitor. She was.

He poked his head into the room. It had two beds, but only one was occupied, by a tiny form swaddled in bandages and compression garments and a pretty blue nightdress. "Hi, sweetie," he said.

Her eye got very large. "You’re from TV!"

"I am." He handed her the teddy bear, and sat down in the chair by her bed. "My brother was there when you got hurt. I thought if I could make sure you're all right... tell him how you're doing..."

"I got burned." Her voice got very small. "My mom and dad are dead."

"I know, sweetie. And I’m so sorry." She scooched over in bed and reached for him, and he moved the chair closer and very, very gently put a sanitized hand on the part of her head that wasn’t bandaged. "Is someone looking after you?"

"Yeah," she said. "When I get out of rehab I’m going to live with my uncle and my aunt and my cousins."

"I’m glad you have them," Finn said gently.

"They gave me this book," she said, disengaging and reaching clumsily for the night table. 

Finn saw it. "Do you want me to get it for you?"

"No, I can." The unburned half of her face was red when she finally hauled the book up onto her lap. "It has dinosaurs." 

For an hour he sat there while she told him about the different dinosaurs. He asked her questions, and most of them she could answer. When she didn’t know, he'd look up the answer on his phone, and they would read it together.

They were on the last page anyway when a nurse poked her head in and gave Finn a meaningful look. 

"Do you remember my brother?" Finn asked as he stowed the book in the night table. He'd asked again if Brit wanted help, and this time she had said yes. "He has one blue eye and one grey--" 

He didn’t have to say any more. Half of her face lit up. "Of _course_ I remember him. He was very nice. He stayed with me. He put his coat on me and said I could squeeze his hand when it hurt. It hurt a _lot_."

"I'm sure he would be here instead of me, but he hasn't been feeling very well," Finn told her. "I think it would really cheer him up to know that he helped you. Could I record you saying hi to him?" 

"Yeah!" she said, and he started to pull out his phone, but he grabbed a skrib instead. This was better, because he could just leave it with Brynjar. "That’s a funny recorder," she observed, putting out a finger to touch it.

"It’s a very old one," he said, as he breathed magic into it with a flourish that made it look like sleight of hand. It lit up softly.

She aimed a shy wave at it. "Hello, Mr. Kvam. Thank you for saving me. The firemen wouldn’t believe me about what you did to the fire, but they said you saved my life by keeping me warm and staying with me and talking to me. I’m getting better. I’m going to stay with my aunt and my uncle and my cousins." She drew a shaky breath. "I miss my parents so much, and it still hurts a lot, and I didn't want everything to change. But when I'm sad about losing my eye or my fingers, I think of what you told me about you, and it makes me feel better. And even if all the parts of you don’t work the way they used to, you still got to be a hero, _and_ you’re still pretty. And I hope you feel better soon."

"Oh honey," Finn said as the light of the skrib faded, "that’s beautiful. He’ll love that."

She beamed up at him.

***

Half an hour later, chased out by the nurses, he left the hospital. He shoved his gloved hands in his pockets, feeling the warmth and weight of the skrib. Now he just needed Brynjar.

He waited, crossing the street idly. 

He _needed_ Brynjar _Kvam_.

He was halfway down the street before he shook his head at his own silliness, and texted, "where r u?"

A minute or so later, he got a reply. "I am at Anker Hostel, bitterly lamenting that for me to chastise you for not texting in at least proper Bokmål would be the purest hypocrisy."

***

When Finn looked up Anker Hostel, he shook his head at himself. It was just down the street from Folketeateret, where Vegard's smiling face beamed down from the banner without a hint of reproach.

He was readily admitted to the hostel to cheer up his depressed friend, and someone went upstairs with him to give him access to the corridor before popping back down, and the only question he was asked was if he could pose for a photo. Granted, he was asked four times, and one of those times involved a group of eight people.

He knocked at the door to Brynjar's room. "Enter," Brynjar said, and Finn heard slow, fumbling movement. He quietly magicked the card lock, and pushed the door open. 

It was a four-bed dorm, empty now except for one bed by the window. Brynjar was in the process of getting out it: he had his hands clasped under his left leg, and was lifting it to swing it over the side. When he looked up and saw Finn--his bruises had healed, but the left side of his face was slack, the eyelid drooping over his opaque eye--he slurred, "I has thought, and it are not hypocrisy. You has a choice, and I does not."

"Brynjar, I thought you said you had a place to stay!"

"Let’s us see. Four walls, check. Roof, check. Bed, check. Fridge, check. Hotplate, check. Sink, check. Elevator--very important--check. New friend who finds me theologically appalling but still bringing groceries, check. Roomies to helping when there are something I just cannot do, check."

This wasn’t fair: together, Finn and Melantha managed a comfortable living, but Brynjar’s only income was what he’d made from the special in the fall. "You could stay with us, Brynjar." He opened his mouth to say in fact Brynjar was going to be doing just that and he should get his things, but Brynjar shook his head. 

"No, Finn. I are comfortable here, and I has my dignity. An essential component of my dignity being not having to listen to you play kissy-face with thy beloved." His face fell. "Oh Finn, they taked your braids. And--" He reached up, looking stricken. "--your earrings."

"It won’t be forever. I have something to show you," Finn said. He sat down next to Brynjar on the bed and pulled out the skrib. He played it for Brynjar, and studied his face.

Brynjar pressed the bad hand to his mouth, and watched, tears welling up in both eyes. His good hand crept up over his face.

Finn sat down next to him. "Does _that_ convince you?"

Brynjar’s voice was small and choky. "I are convinced, Finn. But there are one small problem."

"What?"

Brynjar fixed the blue eye on him. "I has been convinced for two weeks now."

"What?"

"I has taked up my godhead, Finn. What are left of it."

"I don't understand, Brynjar. It doesn't go away. You've always told me it doesn't go away."

"No, but I gived it up, and having tried to take it back I find something else are using it. Draining it. I cannot escapify it, or put it off me. I thinking... I thinking part of the group's ministrations are a spell." He sighed heavily. "I were not going to say anything. I suspect Vegard were arrested on information I told them, I thinked in confidence, and this seemed to me a reasonable penancy. Until now."

"Brynjar!" Finn let out an exasperated sigh. "How likely are we to be disturbed?"

"My roomies are at the Museum of Cultural History."

"Good." Finn touched Brynjar's left temple, feeling for the currents of magic. A cursory examination revealed nothing other than the dark and angry scars on Brynjar's divinity, but with an idea of what he was looking for, Finn probed deeper. He hadn't really done a lot of this kind of thing, not in people's heads, but some basics had been included with his implants at infusion, and anyway this was Brynjar. And-- "You're right," he murmured. "Some kind of spell, sort of... wrapped around the bright part. Which is looking a lot better than a few weeks ago, by the way, but still nowhere near where it should be. Spell's complicated. Very subtle. Mostly invisible."

"Canst thou remove it?"

Finn examined it from every angle. He funnelled quiet little threads of power through Brynjar to it, and watched where they went. Finally he said, "I think... with both of us, we might be able to take this off. I'm going to choke it. You hit it with everything you've got, and then I'll try to keep it open while you slip out, all right?"

Brynjar nodded, eyes shut tight. 

"On three. One... two..."

The magic burned like cold fire as Finn choked it off, stopped it from swallowing Brynjar's divinity--which, even with this momentary respite, rebounded with gratifying force. Brynjar slammed into the spell, shaking it, and then Finn pulled one way, and Brynjar pulled the other way, until Finn felt the wickedly barbed tendrils of alien magic let go. 

He tried to follow it when it retreated, but it lashed out, hitting him hard enough to stun him, raking him as it tore away. 

Through a haze of ragged pain, Finn perceived a point of light and clarity. As he looked, it resolved into an eye the grey of a November sky. 

Brynjar had one arm around him, while the other tilted Finn’s chin up to blearily meet his gaze. "Brace thyself," Brynjar murmured. "I can fixing this."

It felt like being immersed soul-first in a bath that was just shy of scalding, and when it was over, the torn and ragged bits were smoothed over, and Finn felt whole again. "Thanks," he breathed.

"You have gived me back myself, Finn. It were the least I could do."

"That thing was _nasty_. I’m sorry... I didn’t see anything that would help me identify it." He looked up at Brynjar. "How about you? Back to normal? Relatively speaking?"

Brynjar pulled a few faces. Symmetrical faces. "Yeah..."

"You don’t sound very sure."

"Where it latched on are still... my vision are not quite working in that direction." He grimaced, and turned his head this way and that. 

"Let’s see?" Finn said. "You’ve still got a few rough spots, but considering what you just went through, nothing unusual."

Brynjar shook himself, and blinked hard a few times. "’Twill heal, I are sure. My thank yous, Finn." Carefully, experimentally, he stood. And took a deep breath. And grinned.

"That reminds me," Finn said. He pushed into the pocket of null space he’d memorized, and pulled out a carved walking stick. Done over weeks instead of days, taken from a live tree with its blessing, it was more ornate than the original. The head was carved in the shape of two ravens now, perching on the outstretched arms of a bearded figure with cherubic cheeks and ratty clothes. This figure in turn was standing on the upturned palm of a huldra, whose tail was a chain with exquisitely carved links and whose feet ended in a whirlwind. He’d fully intended to carve something with a forearm brace, but this was the shape that had felt right, no matter how he’d tried to argue with it.

Brynjar received the stick with both hands, in a gesture of reverence. "It are beautiful, Finn. You honour me." He examined the workmanship. "What are she holding in her other hand? I would think a skrib but it are so large..."

Finn looked at his feet. "In my head it was sort of a pink and yellow fruit. I don’t know. I needed to put something there." He twitched his shoulder uncertainly. "Can I take you to lunch?"

Brynjar took a few experimental steps, leaning on the stick. "Let me, Finn. I are in your debt."

"No debts between brothers," Finn said, and when the time came they split the bill.

***

After Finn left, Brynjar returned to the hostel and flopped back on his bed, savouring his divinity. The weakness had been a bloody nuisance, but without his godhead he’d hadn’t felt wholly himself. Now, he combed through his rootlets. They had not been well cared for, had been pressed into services that did not feed them or that from which they drew, but they were already plumping up with power, forgiving him for his abandonment.

Healing took a lot of energy, and he dozed off like this. When he woke, his roommates were back and banging around. One bent over him, and addressed him in Romanian-accented English. "Hey, buddy, how are you do--whoa!" He backpedalled as Brynjar opened his eyes and sat up. 

"I are much better, thank you," Brynjar said. "You has my gratitude for your aid, these weeks."

"No problem, man." The three of them were huddled as far away from him as they could go. 

"I assuring you, my snark is worse than my smite," Brynjar sighed.

The one who'd bent to check on him said, "It's just... you look... you look... different."

"Different _ly_ ," Brynjar corrected helpfully. "Dragomir, I sees that your grandmother are not well, and while your parents say nothing for the fear of spoilfying your trip, if you wouldst see her once more you had best go back. There will being other trips. Cosmin, be easy, for you has more than passed your examinances. Radu, thou mistakest not the signals: he are heartsick for you, but he telleth himself the things you tell yourself."

As they stood staring at each other, Brynjar took up his stick and the small shopping bag of used clothing and toiletries he’d amassed. He paused at the door. "You may has my food and my blessings. I are checking out." 

It felt good to walk down the stairs on two legs--even if, after weeks of underuse, his weak knee nearly gave out--and good to smile at the counter staff with his whole mouth. It felt good to reach into his wallet and hand them cash without fumbling and apologies and trying to pilot one hand that felt like a slab of meat. 

The day was a cold one, the wind brisk, but it felt good to be outside again. He strolled down to the bridge over the Akerselva. Waiting, on a blocky piece of street furniture, for the pedestrian traffic to thin a bit, he let the city feed his rootlets, and gloried in it. Yes, fine, he was bound to the world more tightly and deeply than the people around him, but he reflected, as he shifted his position without having to plan it in stages, that being bound in this manner was the most freeing thing he could imagine.

He pulled out his phone. There was one more person to contact. "Dear Seohee," he keyed in, "my condition has improved, and I am able to leave, perchance to return home. You have been a great comfort to me, and I am in your debt. If you"--he sighed as he hit his character limit, sent it, and started a new message--"need anything, anything at all, feel free to call upon me. I am, anew, Brynjar Kvam."

When he was sure that no one was watching too closely, he rose from the bench and slipped through the trees, and made his way down to the water's edge.

He hadn't dared to hope--Brynjar suspected that entitlement was one of the structural problems with godhood, and he resolved to be very careful of it--but she was there. Sleipnir dropped down from a thread under the bridge, and picked her way over to him. 

"My lovely!" he cried. She nuzzled his face and lipped his hair. He laughed through his tears. Then she closed her teeth over the collar of his duster and slung him up onto her back, and the old roads echoed with triumphant neighing and giddy laughter.

***

Per Kristtorn was in his Underjordiske History class, hearing about how the human Industrial Revolution and the Nisse Profane Crafts movement had contributed to the Victory of the Light, when he got the call. He slipped out to take it, trying to work apology into his posture.

"Yes?" he whispered as soon as he got out the door. "I’m in class."

"That favour you asked me for a couple of weeks ago. Not just you, by the way."

"I figured," Per said, a smile in his voice. 

"Well, I just got word of something that makes me reconsider my answer. Do you think what we talked about at Samhain Eve would be suitable?"

"What? Um... gods! Well, given how everything turned out it’s really not strictly necessary. Especially _that._ "

" _Could_ he, though?"

"I think so. You’d have to ask."

Tinny laughter sounded in his ear. "Of _course_ I’ll ask. As long as asking is worth the bother."

"I think so. But listen, I’ve gotta get back, I’m in the middle of lecture."

"All right. Go. Love you."

"Love you too!" He ended the call, and slipped back into the lecture hall. The professor, probably the tallest goblin he’d ever met, glared, and he dipped his head apologetically.

***

The drop was discovered that night. These things were monitored, of course, the levels noted by the technicians at the beginnings and ends of each shift. A certain amount of loss was to be expected: people died, and they died a lot more easily when you did this to them. But this was a big loss, and when the night shift manager saw the numbers, and didn’t find anything in the news to explain them, she placed a call to her boss, who ran a trace and then left a message with one of the big bosses, who, upon getting it the next day, placed a call to an office in Ringebu, who connected him with Rán. "You lost the new one."

She swore. "Dead?"

"Escaped, they say it looks like. I just forwarded you the numbers."

"Oh. Got ‘em. Oh, yeah, this is an escape. Hell."

"Can you neutralize him?"

"Not the way you’re thinking. He’s got targeted omniscience. He used to give me the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t think he will anymore."

"What about people close to him? People that, if he lost, he would understand he’s being sent a message."

"Well, the one guy’s in prison," she said. "You may have connections there. I don’t."

"Nor I." That wasn’t precisely true, but Ardriel had done a lot of work to distance himself from them, and didn’t think that his asking for help now would be well received. "I was thinking more along the lines of the snoopy one."

"Can’t kill," she said immediately. On the other end of the line, the big boss grimaced at the word. "You know how their originals have that show the humans like? The brother’s taken it on, to replace the one in jail. If he disappears or turns up dead, the humans would want answers. But surveillance says he’s a timid little mouse of a thing, and I remember Kvam being very protective of him. If we sent a message via him, Kvam would get it."

"He’s obviously not timid enough. We had to keep warning him."

"We got him to stop, didn’t we? He wouldn’t even pick up the phone. His girlfriend kept answering."

"Fine, punish the brother. And if you think it would help, the other original. You make the arrangements, Rán. Have someone at the office make the call."

***

Melantha was at home, combing through statistics to send to Ashok, who was putting together an infographic on justice system inequality for the djinn, when the phone rang. "Aruviel."

"Melantha," the voice said, "I think we've been very tolerant. Very very tolerant."

Oh, but she'd come prepared for this, and the outrage she'd been nursing all afternoon served her well here. "As well you should be, unless you want to explain to the humans why half of their favourite comedy duo is missing," she said. 

"Which is precisely why we have endured his behaviour," the voice replied crisply. "But it sounds like he's not getting the message. Please, my dear, if he has any doubts about why we are doing what we’re about to do to him, do make it clear for him."

"What?" She took a couple of deep breaths, and screamed into the phone, "IF YOU TOUCH HIM I’LL KILL YOU!" But she knew before she had started that she was screaming at dead air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Leatherwolf's "Thunder" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIGLw0p5Spw


	14. A Message Delivered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marinara is spilt / Anything can happen when you’re live / Deep dreaming / A sudden silence / "I thought he’d fight."

: _Well, I worked up an appetite in metal shop, but they overcook everything. What they do to beef is shameful. What are you having?_ :

: _Dunno,_ : Bård thought, glancing at the clock. : _Finn's getting dinner. Bloody hell. Phone. Sorry. I’d better take this. Enjoy your swill._ : He answered. "Melantha?"

There was tension in her voice. "Bård, have you got Finn there with you?"

"He went out to run some errands. He'll be back any minute. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. I just, I can't get hold of him..." Her voice wavered. 

He was on his feet now, doing math in his head, wondering if he had time to get out to Ekeberg and back or if he should send someone. "What happened?"

"I just got a--" She took a deep breath. "No, no, don't. Sorry. I just got a bad feeling. You know. Women's intuition. But if you could... just... check on him..." 

"I'll have a look around," Bård promised. He thought about telling her he'd been just about to do that anyway, because Finn was way overdue now, but decided she wouldn't find that reassuring. "I'm sure he's fine. Should I have him call you?"

"If he has time," she said, and it sounded like she was trying hard to sound light and careless. "Thanks, Bård."

He went into the corridor. This time last week, he would have been frantic, but Finn had proven himself once, and he'd nailed rehearsal, so when he'd begged a couple of hours in the afternoon, and promised to bring back food, Bård had agreed readily. It had been more than a couple of hours, though. He wondered if Melantha's hunch had more behind it than hormones.

He met Calle going in the opposite direction. "Calle, have you seen Vegard?"

"I was about to ask you the same question. Anette finished the alterations on his lemur costume."

Bård ducked into Vegard's dressing room, momentarily at a loss. There had to be a way to do this...

He seized a hairbrush, and gently pulled out a single curly hair, pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. Humming, he set up a resonance, and sang, softly, " _We all want to go hooooome._ "

It uncurled and stretched out, follicle first, in the direction of the door. Bård followed it. While he was on the stairs, his phone buzzed. It was a text message from ∞∞ ∞∞∞∞∞. He would have taken a moment to marvel at it, but it said, "Haste."

He burst out into the lobby of Folketeateret and headed for the glass doors, quickening to a run, partly out of urgency and partly because even if he were recognized, at this speed he didn't think anyone was going to give chase.

The hair led him into the frosty near-dark of the late afternoon, across the street, across Youngstorget, and up the hill. When he heard a strangled grunt, he let the hair go, with thanks, and followed the sounds to a pink stucco doorway, where two women and a man were methodically kicking a shape balled up on the ground.

"Stop!" Bård thundered, tackling the man to the sidewalk. He extricated himself and rounded on the women. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like we're doing?" one of the women asked pleasantly. Her canines were pointed like a svartalfr's, but she was tall and blonde. "Your buddy here doesn't listen very well." As her remaining companion, who had a good three inches on Bård, stopped kicking and turned, she said, "Maybe if we repeat the message for _you_..."

Bård turned just in time to see the man launch himself at him, only to be caught, and held, by a stormy-faced Magnus. He turned again, and Calle was grappling with the women. Bård was trying to figure out the best way to move in when suddenly the smaller one stepped back, signalling to her companions. 

"I think we've made ourselves clear," she said, stepping out of Calle's reach--he did not pursue--and tugging at the woman next to her. "Remember, boys, we pay attention. We _always_ pay attention."

The man tried to pull away from Magnus, who held on. At a muttered word, the front of Magnus' jacket caught fire. Magnus let him go with a yelp, and flung himself to the ground, rolling to put himself out. By the time anyone thought to look up, the trio were gone.

"112?" said Calle, pulling out his phone.

"No," Finn said, uncurling, with a little hiss of pain. "Not for that lot. I'll lodge a report with the dálki on my way home. Not that I expect it to amount to much."

Bård knelt by him. Finn put a hand on his shoulder and used it to lever himself to his feet. He nearly doubled over at first, but then he straightened up.

"Tonight's cancelled," Bård told him, standing with him, dread awakening in the pit of his stomach. They had worked out a procedure for cancelling in case of an emergency, but never had to use it before, and certainly never dreamed of using it mere hours before the broadcast.

"No... no." Finn shook his arms out. "I'm good to go. Really."

"Vegard, we need to get you to a hospital!" Calle said. "You're covered in--"

"Marinara sauce," Bård pronounced. He could smell it. "Was that dinner?"

Finn sagged a little. "Yeah. Sorry."

" _Do_ you need to go to a hospital?"

Finn moved his shoulders oddly. "Tomorrow won't feel good, but I think I'll be all right." He gingerly probed a bruise purpling on his cheek, and another on his jawline. Then he passed a hand over his face, and while Bård, wearing his contacts, saw no change, he heard soft exclamations from Magnus and Calle, and knew that Finn had cast a glamour. 

Magnus took off the smouldering remains of his jacket, and shook them a little. Embers flew. "What did they mean about a message?"

"Bloody politics," Finn growled. "Thank you for coming to get me." 

"When we saw Bård take off, we knew something was up," Calle explained. 

Finn gestured to the bundle in Magnus' hands. "I'm sorry about that."

"Think nothing of it. I've always wanted a smoking jacket."

Bård looked Finn over. "F--Vegard, are you sure about tonight?"

"They were trying to scare me," Finn said through clenched teeth. He started walking, stiffly at first, but by the time he got to Youngstorget he was moving like a juggernaut. "I’m not going to let them."

Bård flashed back on Melantha’s call, on her admonitions, on Vegard’s concern for Finn’s safety, and caught up to him. "What is this? What’s going on?"

"That thing I snuck away for today was a protest at the Samkoma," Finn said softly, glancing back as if to check that Calle and Magnus were out of earshot. "I can only guess that that lot took exception to my presence there."

"You spent two hours at a protest?" Bård whispered.

"I didn’t _mean_ to spend two hours," Finn told him sheepishly. "It turns out if you hold up a sign that says 'Free Vegard Ylvisåker,' a bunch of humans show up wanting one. So I think that’ll be my last protest, but not because of a couple of bruises."

So Finn did care, after all. "Melantha is going to kill us both," Bård mused bleakly. Something occurred to him. "You really shouldn’t have been there; you’re _evidence_."

"I had to do _something_ ," Finn told him. "Anyway, I don't even think I got recognized by elves. All the photos of Vegard that Alpha runs are where he's either, like, 'Euuughhhh,' or like, 'Rrrrrrrrrr!' And Melly doesn’t have to know."

"Well, you do have to call her, and let her know you're safe. And she’s gonna see the bruises. Unless you wear a catsuit and mask to bed."

Finn grinned evilly. "I was going to tell her I got hit by a cyclist, but I’m always up for new ideas."

***

The guest tonight was Egil Hegerberg. It was a little uncomfortable, because Egil and Vegard had been on the same team on _Brille_ once, but they were able to get away with any lingering oddness by saying that Vegard was on medication. It had started out as a lie, but it technically wasn't anymore; Finn’s assailants didn’t seem to have set out to do lasting damage, but he was covered in bruises, some of them quite nasty, and had taken a couple of paracets.

"I noticed something was off last week," Egil had said, when they'd told him at the rehearsal. He'd turned to Finn. "Are you all right? A week is an awfully long time to not be quite yourself."

Finn had given him a small smile. "I’ll be whoever I have to be to get this show made."

"Well look... if there’s anything I can do..."

"Thank you," Finn said, and meant it.

He had to shower away the marinara sauce before he’d be any good for anything. Spots on his shoulders and hips were already turning the deep blue that presaged black, but as he towelled off, he caught sight of his eyes in the mirror. They glittered with confidence and high spirits. As agreeable as he was, as prone to timidity and self-doubt and self-blame, he was discovering that he had a threshold, and they’d hit it on the first punch. This wasn't something he'd gotten wrong; it was bullying, plain and simple. He had been doing the right thing, and this was not his fault, and he was not afraid, and they were not going to be able to make him afraid. He borrowed a sharpie to mark knitting glyphs on the worst of the bruises and one rib that felt like it might be cracked. When he dressed in Vegard’s suit and walked out to join Bård, it was with a little spring in his step.

He had to take off the glamour for the cameras. Mona, when she saw his bruises, made sympathetic noises over him. Mette clucked her tongue and said, “I knew one of these days you’d kick the wrong random person.” It was difficult not to wince as they worked, but their results were every bit as good as glamour. 

"Are you sure about this?" Bård pressed, in the wings. "We can still go out and tell people you had an accident."

"It was no accident," Finn said grimly, adjusting his cuffs. He grinned, eyes flashing. "Let’s do this."

The opening song dance hurt, but he managed, and he hoped no one noticed that he sat a bit gingerly, instead of flinging himself into the chair at the end. He smiled, and focused, and felt fine.

When Hegerberg came out, the hug was an exercise in endurance, but the man was an absolute doll to interview, with large guileless blue eyes that belied a surreal sense of humour and a dry, gentle wit. He had the audience, Bård, and Finn helpless with laughter at his stories of touring with Black Debbath. 

Egil was telling them about the new album when suddenly the colour drained from Bård's face and he made a strangled noise. He turned away from the desk and started coughing. 

"Can you speak?" Finn demanded, laying a hand on Bård's sleeve. 

"Yeah," Bård said, turning around just long enough to hook his glass of water from the desk. 

"Are you okay?" Egil asked.

Bård nodded, but he didn't turn around. 

Finn asked himself, WWVD? And he said, "I think he, I do this sometimes too, it's like, when you get a little bit of spit in your throat and it goes down the wrong way? And suddenly you're choking on nothing?" He leaned over to give Bård's shoulder a couple of pats, glancing at his cue cards on the way. "But hey, while this guy’s getting himself together, tell us about the time you met Ozzy Osbourne."

Egil told the story splendidly, and by the time he was finished, Bård had turned back around and seemed to be laughing along with everyone else. Then they went to a taped segment, and Finn said, "What was that?"

"Are you okay?" Egil said again. "You look terrible."

Bård was smiling still, but it was his uncomfortable smile. Mette darted out with makeup, double-checked in a murmur that Bård was all right, and added more colour to his cheeks. "Just a little pain here," he said, gesturing in the vicinity of his ribs.

"Left side?" Egil demanded, with some concern.

"It's not my heart," Bård assured him. "It's a thing I've had all my life, just acting up a bit." He shoved a cue card over to Finn. On it was scrawled the letter V.

The rest of the show crawled by. Bård's pain seemed to have eased, but his hands shook, and he was a little bit... off. Finn stepped up a bit to fill the gap. It was a horrendous balancing act, though: he had to cover for Bård, but he had to do it as Vegard, which meant that he couldn't do any of the clever things he’d developed for his own show. At least it kept his mind off his own ribs.

The moment Finn's shell said, "Aaaaaaaannnd we're clear," Morten rushed out with Bård's cell phone. 

Bård took it with a nod of thanks, and listened. "I know," he said gently. "I know. I'll be right there. Don't drive, okay? I'll get Maria to pick you up and you can go together." 

He hung up, and Finn and Calle and Magnus clustered around. "Gotta go to the hospital," he explained. "Family emergency. Come on, Vegard, I'll fill you in on the way."

Calle and Magnus took the dismissal with the requisite grace and gravity. Bård slipped an arm gently and carefully around Finn's shoulders, but said nothing until they reached the dressing room. Then he closed the door carefully, locked it, and said, "There was a fight at the prison. Vegard..." He swallowed hard. "Someone stabbed my brother."

Finn felt like he'd been dashed with cold water. "Oh gods. Oh gods. Is he...?"

"Alive, but unconscious. I can feel him. Like... really, _really_ unconscious."

"Bård, could it have been because... I...?"

"You didn't do this, Finn. Whoever did do it, I don't care what their excuse is."

"Can I come with? I’ll drive."

"Yeah, thanks. No. Christ. The accountant, remember?" Bård stopped, ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "We have to get her those numbers tonight; she leaves for Rome tomorrow and we need the revised budget next week."

Finn nodded, once. "I’ll take care of it. You take care of him."

"Thanks," Bård said, flinging open the door. "I hate to, but--"

"I know. Go, go!"

"You know what you're sending her?"

Finn rolled his eyes. "I think there _might_ be an Excel spreadsheet or two spelling everything out in more detail than I could ever have wanted."

Bård snorted, and left.

***

Lady Brighid's Hospital was a great green building in Gamle Oslo. It was, Bård saw, in among a number of identical green apartment buildings. There was a dinginess to it that seemed uncharacteristic of the other elven buildings he'd been to.

Some well-meaning soul had painted the waiting room a garish yellow. It was probably meant to be cheerful. Helene and Maria were already there, in uncomfortable wooden chairs. He hugged Helene and felt her shaking. "He’s alive," Bård said. "Alive and holding steady."

They all sat. Maria had dropped their kids off at Helene and Vegard’s, and Sofie was babysitting. "There’s cocoa," Helene said. "Did I tell her about the cocoa?"

"Twice," Maria said, gently.

A doctor in surgical scrubs emerged from the door at the end of the corridor, studying a clipboard. The three of them sat rigid and expectant until the doctor turned and went through another door.

"He sent notes," Helene said. "He was getting along with people. He was having fun making things in gold shop. Does she know how to make cocoa?"

"She’s a smart girl," Bård said. After a moment’s thought, he said, "She’ll probably oversweeten it a little."

"I told her about the marshmallows?"

"If she needs marshmallows, she'll find them," Maria assured her.

"Maybe he waded into a fight to help someone," Helene said. Her face changed. "Maybe it’s like... you know how some crimes even criminals won’t tolerate? Could blood magic be like that?"

"I doubt it," Bård said. "In Varggrav it was a common thing, but you kept it quiet."

"Political then?" Helene said.

The idea clearly upset her, and Bård thought of lying, but instead he said, "Possibly. We’ll have to wait until we hear more."

Helene was silent for a time, peering expressionlessly down the long corridor. Then she said, "Does Sofie know where everything is?"

"If not, she’ll ask her cousins," Maria assured her.

Another doctor in scrubs appeared. This one tucked the clipboard under her arm and made right for them, undoing her mask as she approached. Bård heard his wife and his sister-in-law suck in twin breaths. "He's alive," he reminded them. "I'd feel it if he wasn't. She's gonna come out and tell us he's gonna be fine."

When the doctor was closer, she said, "I’m Dr. Nanael. Are you here for the human prisoner?" 

"Vegard Ylvisåker," Helene said.

Dr. Nanael checked the clipboard, and nodded. "He's stable." She flipped through, frowning. "He's not even that badly hurt; as far as stabbings go, the knife couldn't have been better placed to avoid his organs if the attacker had planned it."

"So why don't you look happy?" Helene demanded.

"He's in a coma," the doctor said, her eyes ticking back and forth between Bård and Helene. "According to witness reports, he was unconscious before he hit the ground, and he hasn't awakened."

"Did he hit his head?" Helene pressed. 

"There’s no sign of head trauma, and nothing’s showing up on a brain scan. Nothing abnormal, I mean. We can see him dreaming, but he’s so deep that we’re not even getting a read on the content."

"What happened?" Maria asked. "Was there a fight?"

"I don’t know," said Dr. Nanael. "You could ask one of the guards. I didn’t see any other injuries on him."

"Can we see him?" Helene demanded.

"I can give you five minutes. Then we’ll have to move him to a ward."

Vegard was on one of several gurneys in a large maze of a room, a limp pale figure at the centre of a network of tubes and wires and metal stands. He was breathing on his own, but he had a heart monitor, and delicate silver knotwork at his temples, and an IV. His green prison shirt had been cut open and still hung in tatters on either side of him. There was surprisingly little blood on it. A small gauze pad covered the wound, and stitches peeked out underneath, surrounded by designs painted in iodine.

"Knitting glyphs," Bård explained to the women. "They’ll help him heal faster."

An unsmiling lios alfr and a very stocky creature with yellow eyes and an underbite stood at the head of the bed. They were both clad in the light blue of the dálki. "You’re the guards?" Helene said. At their nods, she demanded, "What _happened_?"

"We don’t rightly know," the one with the underbite said.

"It was one of the svarts," the lios alfr said. "Just walked up to him in the TV room and stuck him, right out of the blue. Rest assured, though, ma’am, we’re going to make that animal pay."

"There’s an investigation pending," said the guard with the underbite.

"Just walked up to him and stabbed him?" Bård pressed. "Did he say anything? Do anything?"

"Nothing that we heard about," the lios alfr said.

"We didn’t actually see it," the guard with the underbite explained. "We got pulled off break to accompany the prisoner to the hospital."

"Nobody _saw_ it," the lios alfr said. "None of our people, anyway. They heard shouting and came over, but he was already down. Most of what we know comes from the prisoners, so it depends on how much you feel like believing them, but they say the guy walked up, your boy tried to wave hello, and the svart shivved him."

"Political," Helene said softly.

The lios alfr shrugged. "Who knows why they do anything? If they did things that made sense, they wouldn’t be in prison, would they?"

Helene walked gingerly to the head of the gurney, careful not to dislodge anything, and stroked Vegard’s hair. He didn’t stir. She glanced at Bård. "Do you think they’ll let him out early for this?"

"No," the guard with the underbite said immediately. "Plenty of people are saying he got off way too easy as it was. Unless he wants to take extraction."

"Fat chance of that," the lios alfr said jovially, against the backdrop of humming machinery and muted paging. "Thank your gods that he’s alive, and got off as lightly as he did."

***

Finn was good people, Bård had decided by the end of Wednesday. He’d poked his head in early on to ask about Vegard, nodded gravely, and busied himself with the accountant’s comments and the staff and Calle and Magnus, leaving Bård in his office, to do whatever he felt up to.

Bård hadn’t expected to sleep at all last night, but he had, finally, and dreamed of wandering for hours through darkened corridors. He supposed he was subconsciously searching for his brother. Now he had his head in his hands, trying to remember the song he and Vegard had picked for the band to play while Magnus came in pushing the shopping cart, when there was a knock on his office door. Bård looked up and saw that it was four sharp. Surprised, he motioned Finn to come in.

Finn went to Bård’s coat, and handed it to him. "Give everyone my love," he said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

"You’re not my big brother," Bård said bleakly. 

"No, but I play one on TV."

"I’m sorry..."

"For what?" Finn said, looking genuinely mystified. 

"I never asked how you were doing."

"I ache, and I'm not allowed to go to any more protests, but I'm fine." Horror crossed Finn’s features. "You don’t think they hurt him because I went to the rally, do you? "

Bård snorted. "No! That’s the silliest thing I've ever heard. " He thought, and frowned. "Are you sure the rally is why they beat you up?"

"Well, yeah, I haven’t... " Finn trailed off. "Anyway. Go be with him."

Bård went to Lady Brighid’s for a few hours. They’d put Vegard in a ward, and Bård waited in the corridor, playing Chibi Grendel Rendezvous on his phone and losing again and again, while Helene and Vegard’s kids visited. Then he had his own time with his brother, watching him lie motionless, the heart monitor steadily tracing light across the screen, his brainwaves gently undulating lines, except for one at the bottom that seemed quite busy. He wondered, idly, where his parents and Bjarte were, and then remembered, sick at heart, that they didn’t know any of this, _couldn’t_ know it. If something happened, if the unthinkable happened, Bård was going to have a lot to answer for. 

Then Maria and the kids came by for their own visit, and when they were hungry he gave Vegard’s shoulder a squeeze, told him to hang in there, and went home with them. His family was, as ever, a balm, and with them he finally found himself relaxing a little.

He was eating dinner when he felt a light extinguished, a profound loneliness that swallowed everything. He dropped his fork with a clatter.

"What's wrong?" Maria asked. 

"Vegard..." He looked at the curious faces of his children, and bolted up from his chair. "Excuse me."

Maria followed him into the living room, looking concerned. 

"Vegard just died," he whispered. 

She pressed a hand to her mouth. "Oh... oh. You felt it?"

He nodded mutely. She sat him down in the wingback chair and put her arms around him and held him as he sobbed. At some point he became aware of the kids crowded around the chair, and little hands on his shoulders. 

They got Sofie to look after Nora and Jens, and Maria drove Bård to the hospital. "I want to see my big brother," he told the desk nurse, a middle-aged woman with ears tufted like a lynx’s and skin the colour of porridge. Helene was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she was already in there with him.

"You have to wait for visiting hours," she said.

"He just died."

The nurse scanned a clipboard, made an a-ha face, and then did a double-take, and looked at him askance. "Suriel Lumael? Or Jorianna Friskin?"

"Vegard Ylvisåker."

She raised her eyebrows, put the clipboard down, and clicked through a computer display. "He's stable." She turned the monitor around so that he could see Vegard's name, his strong, steady vital signs, and the still-active brainwaves.

Bård sagged against the counter. Maria grabbed a chair from by the public telephone and ushered him into it. 

The nurse had come out from behind her desk to stand over him. "Head between your knees," she murmured. "Deep breaths. That's good. When you're feeling steadier, I'll let you see him for just a moment, okay?"

"Okay," Bård whispered. His hand found Maria's, and he squeezed. She held him close, and kissed the top of his head.

When he could stand without falling over, the nurse conducted him to Vegard's room. It wasn't properly dark, hospitals never were. Vegard looked exactly as he had the last time Bård had seen him, which wasn't great, but wasn't dead, either.

Bård took his brother's hand, the one that wasn't hooked up to the monitors. It was warm. Vegard was warm, and breathing on his own.

He turned to the nurse, gesturing at Vegard’s brainwaves. "These mean his brain’s all right? All of it?"

"I couldn't say for certain," she said. "What made you think he was dead?"

He knew this was a hospital for elves, and he saw the tufts of hair at the tips of her ears, but something about her was so very practical that he couldn't bring himself to tell her about Huginn's eyes. "A feeling I had," he said. "A strong feeling. It's usually not wrong."

"Well, he's stable, and getting better care here than he would anywhere else," she said, and he was out the door before he realized that she had herded him away from his brother. "And you had better go home and get some rest. Tomorrow the doctor will be making her rounds around 14.00, if you want to talk to her about his condition."

"Thank you," Bård said, keeping his voice low. "I do really appreciate..."

They had reached the nurse's station now, and Maria, who put a protective arm around him.

"We'll do our best, Mr. Ylvisåker," the nurse promised.

***

Maria drove him home, and assured the kids that Uncle Vegard was all right and Papa had just had a really bad feeling, was all. Then she shepherded Bård into their bedroom, and sat him down on the bed.

"I'm glad... he's... breathing," Bård said carefully, "but I felt him just wink out. He's still gone."

"You're talking about that telepathic link."

"Yeah."

She sat next to him, and pulled his head onto her shoulder. This was something that used to hurt until the doctor in Varggrav had healed his shoulder. The neck, an old aerial silk injury, had been incidental. Blood magic had given Bård back his neck and taken away his brother, and he would give anything to have it the other way around now. 

"I thought he'd fight," Bård said. "I didn't think he would just... go out like that."

"You know what I think?" Maria said. "Don't give up on him just yet. Maybe something affected your bond. Maybe he’s in a part of his mind you’re just not hooked up to. It’s been one day."

Bård nodded miserably. "I just feel like everything's sliding away from me. And there's nothing I can do to stop it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: I found the perfect song, and then a few days later, the artist died; so rather than appropriate his swan song, I will rather suggest Hamlet Gonashvili's hauntingly beautiful performance of the Georgian folksong "Tsintskaro" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4C3HXXrug


	15. Vegard's Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the gutter, staring at the stars / A change in his condition / A change in his priorities / A gift for Helene / Mutilation

Finn dreamed that Melantha was leaving him, and he followed her all over the house, showing her things to try to make her stay--his vacuum cleaner, his umbrella stand, his speakers, his cat sculpture. Every time, she would roll her eyes at him, and every time, he would move on to something else, certain that _this_ would keep her here, _this_ would make her love him again. 

He jerked awake to an empty bed. There was the glow of a light in the hallway, and the microwave was on. He sank back with a sigh. Then his gaze roved upwards, and met a pair of mismatched eyes. "Hi, Brynjar."

Brynjar peered down from his perch atop the antique oak headboard. "You was having a panicsome dream, Finn. I thinked it best to come."

"Yeah. Can I...? Are you here to...?"

"But of courses."

Finn sat up, propping himself up against the headboard and drawing up his knees. "Vegard would rather go to jail than talk to me. He wouldn't even read my messages. And now he's hurt and it's probably punishment for me helping you, isn’t it? And Bård hates me. He tries not to show it, but he blames me for what's happening."

Brynjar shrugged off his coat and slid down, landing beside him on Melantha's pillow. "Finn, Finn. I must making promises and taking confidences. But I will tells you, there are more going on here than you know. And it are very complicated, but blame not yourself."

Finn had a hand over his face, and he was crying quietly. 

"Hush, hush," Brynjar singsonged. He pulled the hand away and looked searchingly into Finn's face. Finn let out a little involuntary hiss as Brynjar's thumb brushed the bruise on his jawline. Brynjar frowned, licked his thumb, and rubbed at the bruise until it faded to yellow. He repeated the procedure on the other bruises on Finn’s face. "Does you want comfort as a friend and a brother, or...?"

Finn sniffled. "I guess... the other thing. Maybe."

Brynjar beckoned a little, and Finn nestled himself in his arms. Brynjar patted Finn's head. "This are a very big world, Finn, but it are also a very small world in a very big universe. In a constellation shaped like a shield are a star called UY Scuti. If Earth were the sizing of a beach ball, UY Scuti would be from here to Drammen. Come, Finn, this you known already."

"I know," Finn said soggily, tucked into the crook of Brynjar's arm. "It just helps to hear it from someone else sometimes." 

"Comparified to UY Scuti thou art a speck of dust that exist for an eyeblink. And yet there are only one Finn Weber in the universe, and he are possessing powers UY Scuti will never have, and the object of feelings that UY Scuti in all its vastification can never know."

"Yay, feelings," Finn sighed. "Do you do absolution?"

"I thinking not, Finn. I can love you my own self, and see the truth and telling it to you, and try to dissolve your guiltiness in the wonderiffic majesty of space and time, but you will has to learn to forgive yourself." He cocked his head. "Does you?"

"What, absolution?" Finn laughed through his tears. "Whatever for?"

"This are because of me." Finn thought that he might be offering to share the blame as a matter of gallantry, until he heard the note of anguish under Brynjar’s customary singsong. "Hadst I not lost faith in myself..."

"You’re allowed to work out who you are, and you’re allowed to get it wrong sometimes," said Finn, firmly. It was something Maria had told him, when she was expressing her concerns about his relationship with Melantha. "If someone takes advantage of that, that’s on them." He looked into Brynjar’s eyes, the grey one curious and watchful, the blue one sad and anxious. "Any absolution I can give is always already yours. You know that."

"I knowing. It help to hear it from someone else sometimes." Brynjar raised his head, like a stag scenting danger. "Melantha are finished her soup. I must away." Wobbling just a little on the weak knee, he rose in one movement, swirled on his coat, stepped into the pair of shoes he’d left on the windowsill, and slipped out the window, pushing it closed behind him. 

Ten seconds later, Melantha shuffled in, yawning. "Oh sweetness," she said, "you’re awake. You look much better, though." She sat on the side of the bed, and ran a hand down the side of his face. "Are you crying?"

"I had a bad dream."

She slipped and arm around his shoulders, and snuggled down next to him. "Want to talk about it?"

"It feels like everything is coming apart," he whispered, clinging to her. His fingers crept down to brush the swell of her belly, but he was afraid, he’d always been afraid, to do more than brush, as if the full weight of his hand would dislodge the little thing inside, would poison it with his uncertainty. "I’m so scared, Melly."

"Me too," she whispered into his hair.

***

On the fourth day, Friday, Bård’s phone rang just after lunch. When he checked the display and saw Helene's name, he knew exactly what she was going to say. His fingers had gone weak, and it took him three tries to answer. "Hello," he said faintly.

"You felt it?" she said. Her voice was even. There was no accusation. She didn't even sound shattered, not yet.

"Yeah. Helene, I--"

"So where are you? Why aren’t you here?"

With shaking hands, Bård closed his computer and got up, ignoring the curious looks from the others. He shrugged on his leather jacket. Suddenly the decision to not tell her days ago just seemed cruel. "I'm coming. Now. I promise. I'm so sorry."

"You'd better!" she said. "He's been asking for you for half an hour."

Bård froze with his hand on the door handle. "He... what?"

"He really wants to see you. I've been reminding him you're at work, but he says it's important."

"He's talking. He's okay. He's really talking?"

"Bård, are you all right? Couldn’t you tell?" 

"No! Okay. Wow. Okay. I’ll be right there, Helene."

"I’ll tell him not to go anywhere," she said wryly.

Bård ploughed through the door, past Finn and the rest of the office. "Gotta follow up on something!" he announced. "Look, I'm headed into the stairwell," he told Helene. "Might lose you. There soon."

"Bye," she said cheerfully, and hung up.

Finn had trailed him into the stairwell. When the door was safely closed--Bård was already at the first landing--Finn said, "What news?"

Bård didn't want to go back up, but he did pause until Finn came down to him, looking very pale under the fluorescent lights. "He's awake!" Bård said, giving Finn an impulsive hug, and Finn squealed, and the two of them hopped around the landing in an impromptu happy dance.

"I’m dying to see him," Finn said, his smile fading a little, "but you probably need me here to hold the fort, don’t you?"

"I’d appreciate it a lot," Bård told him, giving Finn’s shoulder a squeeze before stepping back. "They’ll think there’s something really wrong if we both go running out."

"Can do, Bård," Finn said, already climbing back up the steps. "Give him my love, though."

"I will."

***

The nurse with the tufted ears was on the desk. "You okay?" she said warmly.

"Yeah," he said, surprised to have been remembered. "Do they ever let you go home?"

She gave him a tired smile. "I’m on until seven tonight."

On the way over, in the car, Bård had tried again and again to reactivate the link with Vegard, but it was still gone. "Thank you so much for... for Wednesday night. Letting me see him. Thank you."

"You needed to. And _now_ you get to go in and say a proper hello to him." Bård took that as his cue, and moved off. "He’s very talkative," she called after him.

He heard voices as he approached the room. His heart leapt in his chest when he heard Vegard. 

Helene was sitting in a chair beside Vegard’s bed, and she saw him first. "Bård!" she cried, and leapt to her feet to give him a quick hug.

The back of Vegard’s bed was raised. He was pale, and his hair was combed straight and so stringy and greasy that it had stayed that way, but he was smiling, and he reached up with both arms for a hug. Bård couldn’t help it; he clutched him fiercely, tucking his chin into the crook of Vegard’s neck, and held on for an unreasonably long time. Vegard let him, patting his back and making soft soothing noises.

Finally, Bård pulled back, and took a seat on the chair Helene had pulled up for him. "I thought... I thought..." 

"I’m sorry," Vegard said softly. Then he said, sounding more cheerful, "Hey, wanna see?" He reached down gingerly and tugged the edge of his gown over, to show Bård the wound. The gauze and the knitting glyphs were gone. "The stitches come out in two more days," he said. "I would probably have had to go back before now if I’d been conscious."

"Do they have any idea what caused the coma?" Bård asked.

"None," Vegard said, and then his eyes went far off for a second. Then he said, "Are you okay?"

Bård tried to share a bit of what he was feeling, but he was still alone in his own head. "I am, I am. I’m just... I was so worried about you."

Vegard leaned over, made a face, straightened up, and settled for gesturing at a pitcher and a paper cup. "You should have some water."

"No, it’s okay. Don’t worry about me. You just..." What? Get better, so he could go back to prison? Bård let his shoulders drop. "Ten more weeks to go," he sighed.

"Actually..." Vegard said. 

"Actually?"

"I told Helene already, but one of the reasons I wanted to see you right now was so I could tell you too: I’m taking them up on their offer."

"Offer?" Bård echoed. 

"If I let them take my magic, they’ll let me go. I wasn’t ready then. I’m ready now, believe me."

"What?" Bård wavered. "But... this was a thing you cared about so much..."

"I care about my family more," Vegard said. "I care about my job. I care about my freedom."

"You've already given up so much so you could keep it," Bård protested. He looked at Helene for support, but she only looked solemn. 

"They tell me I could have died," Vegard said. "It changes your priorities, Bård. I want to come home now. I talked to them. They're taking me back tonight, but I'll have it done Monday, and I'll be a free man. Are you sure you don’t want water?"

"I’m sure," Bård said. 

"But here’s the thing. You can’t let your magic lapse like last time, okay? I need you to keep up with it."

"Why?" Bård demanded. "How is that even fair?"

"One of us needs to, and it can’t be me." 

"If they take your magic," Bård said through his teeth, "I don’t want anything to do with them. None of them."

"They’re not the ones deciding," Vegard pointed out. "I am." He sank back on the pillow, looking paler than before.

"I should let you get some rest, shouldn’t I?" Bård sighed. He felt sick at heart, and didn’t want to fight.

Vegard smiled sadly. "Remember when you were little, you used to give me these big sloppy kisses on the side of the head?"

"Not really."

"I miss those."

"Vegard, I am not giving you a big sloppy kiss."

"Hug, then?"

Bård bent over the bed and hugged him. "Ouch! Christ!"

"Hair caught in the bed frame?"

"Must have," Bård said, straightening up and rubbing his scalp where the strands had been ripped out.

"Go back... tell everyone at the office I’m..." Vegard’s face changed. "Oh. No one knows, do they? They’ve got Finn."

"Yeah," Bård said. "He says hi, though. He sends his love."

"Yeah," Vegard said, looking very far off for a second. Then he snapped out of it. "Tell him I... tell him... just tell him thanks."

***

Helene watched Bård’s retreating back until he turned the corner, and then turned back to her husband. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Not really." Vegard was rubbing the side of his face with one hand, and the side where he’d been stabbed with the other. "He doesn’t like it. I don’t like it either, but..." He made a visible effort to brighten. "I have something for you."

***

"Finn, do you have the notes for tomorrow?"

The ruse wouldn't have worked any other time, but unbeknownst to Magnus, Finn had exclaimed over a woman's beautiful German shepherd while he was out getting coffee, and she'd asked him if he had a dog, and first he said yes and then he said no. And sympathy had crossed her face, and she'd said, "Awww... across the Rainbow Bridge?" He'd been so silly, he'd gazed at her in wonder and said yes, and she'd patted his shoulder, a sad smile on her face. "The only time they break our hearts is when they die." And then he realized what she'd been saying and made some lousy excuse to run away and he hoped that she didn't think it was her or that he'd been playing for sympathy or anything, and oh gods he was such a fool sometimes. 

So now, flustered, he just said, "Yeah." He searched around on his desk, and found the piece of paper, and handed it to Magnus. And then seemed to realize what he'd done, and froze.

Magnus eased around the desk, pushing the door gently shut with one hand. "How long has it been you?" he demanded, keeping his tone neutral.

"Since the twenty-fourth," Finn sighed. 

"Does Bård know?"

"Yeah. Yeah. It was his idea."

"Well," Magnus said carefully, "it seems weird to say this to someone I've been working with for three weeks, but it's nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you."

Finn gave him a feeble smile. "Likewise."

"What happened to Vegard? Is he all right?"

"He's in..." Finn made an uncomfortable motion with his head. "...elf jail."

Magnus laughed, and sat down across from him. "Elf jail?"

"Because of something he did for me, actually," Finn said. "What tipped you off?"

"You’ve been strange for a little while," Magnus said carefully. "You’ve hardly said two words to Calle. Your posture’s a little different. You dress with a, what do you call it, a _palette_. You’ve got a real physical actual book in your bag, and it’s a novel. _Perdido Street Station_. Then last week I accidentally knocked your Pepsi onto the floor and it didn’t fizz, and I realized, it never fizzes. You left a bottle open the other day, and I took a whiff. You didn’t react to being attacked by those people like I thought Vegard would. Then today before Bård left, I overheard him telling Maria he was going to duck out to be with Vegard for his extraction, so when _you_ came back with coffee breath I finally put it all together."

Finn's eyes had flown wide. "Extraction?" he said in a small voice. "Seriously?"

"I wondered, why aren't you at the dentist? And then I thought about how different you’ve been..."

"I've got to go," Finn said rapidly, already on his feet.

"Look, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable--" 

"It's not that," Finn told him. He paused with one hand on the door handle and the other on Magnus' arm. "Thank you. I'm sorry, but thank you." 

"V--Finn, what's going on?"

He looked momentarily torn, eyes darting from side to side. Then he said, "Come with." He bolted out of the office at a near run, Magnus on his heels. While barrelling down the stairs, he shouted over his shoulder, "In Innilokun Ríki, extraction isn't a tooth. They're going to take his magic." He tripped, and squawked as he plunged down.

Magnus reached down and caught him by the upper arm, arresting his fall. "What?" he shrilled. Finn nodded his thanks and kept running, Magnus trailing behind as they nearly took the outside door off its hinges. 

Finn handed over a set of keys. "Can you drive fast? I don’t think I should."

Magnus changed direction, pulling out his own keys. "Then I’ll drive my car. I know it and it has legroom. You tell me where to go. His magic? Honestly?"

"He told you about me, but not _that_?"

"He told us all of it, but I wasn't sure I believed him. No offense, but I'm still not sure I do, completely."

They were at Magnus’ car now. Finn slid in and buckled up. "They’d probably do it right at the hospital," he said, as Magnus pulled out of the lot. "Lady Brighid’s, in Gamle Oslo. It’s glamoured, so I’ll have to direct you. Last year, at Varggrav, Vegard used a blood sacrifice to save my life. Black magic."

" _Vegard?_ " Magnus echoed, flashing his parking pass at the scanner.

"I was dying. I shouldn’t have told him, but I had to do a big dramatic goodbye speech," Finn said bitterly. "I should have just asked them to carry me, and let go on the way. Before I developed a taste for life. Before everything got so bloody complicated."

"Don’t talk like that, Finn," Magnus said, his voice gentling. They sat at a red light now. "Who... who did he sacrifice?"

"It was his blood," Finn assured him. "That’s where his magic went. And the rest of his energy, for months. All towards saving me. And Brynjar. Changing us into humans. As human as we can get. Now that the change is done, he was getting it back."

"He never told us that bit," Magnus said softly. "Wait, then, how is that black magic?"

"It used blood."

"But if it’s his own blood..."

"Yeah, but what if it wasn’t?"

"But it _was_ ," Magnus said. "How can they make that illegal?"

"Because what if it wasn’t?"

"Then there should be a law against using other people’s blood without their permission," Magnus said through his teeth, taking a hard turn. 

"There is," Finn assured him. 

"Then an extra law that nails you even if you use your own blood doesn’t make sense."

"It's complicated," Finn said. "Despicable, but complicated."

Finn directed them to the southbound 150, where traffic was mercifully light. They got off in Gamle Oslo, and Finn told him to turn in at a certain green apartment building, in a block of green apartment buildings. The smaller man undid his seatbelt and bolted from the car as soon as they entered the parking lot. Magnus was pulling into a spot when Finn ran up with a ticket from the machine. He shoved it into the windshield and practically dragged Magnus into the lobby.

Something happened when Magnus touched the door handle; it was like the lights had flickered, except that they were still outside in the feeble late autumn sunshine. And then he had the door open and Finn was tugging him into a hospital. They took a moment to smear on some hand sanitizer from the pump at the door, and at Finn's behest stamp a protective glyph on their wrists in purple ink, he said to ward off errant magics. 

"It can be contagious?" Magnus said.

"It goes astray," Finn grunted, scanning signs. "Not just from the patients, either." He licked his finger, grimacing at the taste of hand sanitizer, and held it up to the building’s still air. "This way," he said, leading Magnus down many white and yellow corridors, right and right and down a flight of stairs and left and right again, now never even glancing at signs. Still holding his finger up, he went to a closed door, and flung it open.

It was a plain windowless room, cinderblocks painted beige. Vegard, real Vegard wearing a shaggy grey bathrobe and hospital gown and sweatpants, reclined in something that looked a little like a dentist’s chair, except that restraints that appeared to be solid silver encircled his wrists, upper arms, thighs, and ankles, and ran tight across his hips, chest, and forehead. Silver filigree perched at his temples. He was surrounded by Bård and Helene and three strangers--one in a white coat and two in suits that seemed to be cut a little oddly--who looked thoroughly disgusted at the interlopers. But Magnus didn’t care how they looked at him. Seeing Vegard’s face again, Magnus wondered how he could ever have mistaken Finn for him; they looked identical, but there was something fundamentally different in how the two men carried themselves, how they set their mouths, how their eyes fixed on things. It hurt more than a little to see Vegard's face fall, to see the expression of stoic determination replaced with horror. 

"Vegard, no, please don’t do this!" Finn cried, and there was real anguish in his voice.

"Shhh!" Bård hissed, throwing out an arm in a warding-off gesture. 

The woman in the white coat poised her hands over Vegard's head, and murmured something to him. Vegard tore his eyes from Magnus and Finn, and shifted his gaze to Helene for a fraction of a second. Then he swallowed hard, and set his mouth. 

He jerked as violently as the restraints would let him, and his eyes flew wide before rolling back in his skull. 

The woman in the white coat did something with her hands, above his temples, and then plucked away the filigree and stepped back. "There," she said brightly. "You can take him home now."

Finn let out a wail, and collapsed against the wall.

"Just like that?" Helene said. She’d been holding Vegard’s hand as best she could with the restraints. Now she stroked his limp fingers and disentangled them from her own.

"He's free to go."

Bård frowned. "Shouldn't we wait until he wakes up?"

"It's going to take a few days before he's mobile, and the next extraction is scheduled in ten minutes," she said crisply, and left the room, trailed by the suits. 

Helene and Bård undid the restraints, and pulled Vegard's limp body into a sitting position. His eyes were half open, but he flopped around like a ragdoll. They managed to turn him so his legs hung over the sides, and get his arms around their shoulders, but when they stood up they were clearly dragging dead weight. 

They staggered three steps, and then Magnus stepped forward. "Let me," he said grimly. He got one arm under Vegard's shoulders and the other behind his knees and lifted, cradling the smaller man like a child. Finn had dragged himself to his feet, and with him and Bård and Helene holding doors and calling out obstacles, Magnus carried Vegard out of the building and to Helene’s car. When he’d eased Vegard into the back seat, Magnus tossed his own keys to Finn, and then sat in the back with Vegard, while Helene drove and Bård rode shotgun. Finn followed them in Magnus' car.

"I think he’s awake," Magnus reported after a time, as they crossed the bridge. He had an awful lot of questions, but now didn't seem like a good time to ask. "Vegard? Vegard, can you hear me?"

Vegard's eyes roved over to Magnus, and he blinked hard, but he made no response.

At the house, Vegard still couldn’t move under his own power, but his jaw was clenched, and one hand, locked into a claw, drummed against his thigh. Magnus lifted him out of the car. This time Vegard was able to at least hook one forearm around the big man's neck and keep it there. His head still lolled. Tears brimmed in his unfocused eyes. Bård went on ahead to tell the kids that Papa wasn't feeling well, and he was home and he was safe but it would be good if they just played quietly for the rest of today, and they would see how he was feeling tomorrow. 

With Helene leading the way, Magnus carried Vegard upstairs, to the master bedroom, and laid him on the bed. He wondered, as he gently pried Vegard's fingers away from the back of his neck, how many times over the past three weeks Vegard had wished to sleep in his own bed again. Now Magnus had helped make it happen, but somehow he didn't think it was the relief that it should have been. 

The furrows where Vegard's nails had dug into the back of his neck stung. Vegard lay expressionless on the coverlet, tears trickling out the corners of his eyes and leaving wet tracks down to his temples. 

Magnus stepped back. He felt like he had seen too much, a moment of weakness that Vegard might never forgive him for being part of. If he recovered at all. "I should go," he said hollowly. He met Bård's eyes for the barest moment. "Keep me posted," he said. Then he squeezed Vegard's trembling hand--Magnus' skin was still under the fingernails--and maybe Vegard had managed a squeeze back or maybe it was just another spasm, but then Magnus was out the door and down the stairs and outside of the house, and it didn't matter anymore. 

Finn was at the front door, hanging back. "It's not a good time," Magnus said, his voice breaking. 

He drove Finn back to the office. He wanted to go home to his partner and spend the rest of the day trying to drown out the panicky, hollow feeling that said nothing would ever be the same again, but tomorrow night was showtime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Front 242’s Curve remix of Rammstein’s “Keine Lust” - http://tidido.com/a35184372108052/al540718e8196deee83f8b4585/t540800ce196dee94758e535e


	16. Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to blend in with humans #5: covering for friends / In the nursery / Everything hurts / The end of the season / The Lady helps out / A housecall / A visit from Tomte / Urgency

Helene had shooed Bård out of the house soon after Magnus and Finn had left. He sat in his car, and phoned Maria, and told her as much as he dared. He wanted to hide. He wanted to quit. He wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for weeks. Instead he drove back to the office, his throat tight and aching with tears he didn’t want to shed.

Finn was there, and greeted him with the customary little nod. He looked as gutted as Bård felt. 

Bård didn’t think he’d get a lot of intellectual labour done today. He sorted the most urgent things to the top--it took him half an hour, when it should have taken him five minutes--and then got started. He managed to strike a couple of the items from his list. They were both phone calls, and he found his attention wandering dangerously during the second one. 

At 1.30, when he’d been staring blankly into space for precisely eighteen minutes, Finn knocked on his door. Bård’s anger flared. That wasn’t a Vegard knock, and no one would be fooled by it. "Come in."

Finn slipped in, and closed the door behind him. "First and foremost, I’m so sorry," Finn said.

Bård gave him a little nod, to indicate he had heard.

"How is he?"

"I don’t know," Bård said. It bothered him a lot, that Finn had shown up this morning. Why _then_? Why when it was too late?

"Is there something I can do?" Finn asked. 

Bård looked at him levelly for awhile. "Thanks for asking," he said finally, "but I’m not in a headspace to be able to give you constructive answers right now."

Finn nodded. "I... can appreciate that." His eyes roved around Bård’s desk, and he started plucking up papers. "I’m taking this... and this... and this. And these."

"Thanks," Bård said. 

Some of the work that Finn had taken, Bård didn’t think he could manage without help. But then he saw Finn sitting with Magnus, their heads together. That was right, he’d come with Magnus. Why on Earth had Finn taken the young man into his confidence? Bård thought of calling him in and asking, but the thought made him exhausted. 

They went to Folketeateret later in the afternoon, to practice with Thea and get everything ready for tomorrow. Bård went through the moves until he had them mechanically perfect. 

Finn dared, once, to put a hand on Bård’s shoulder. Bård flinched away before he could stop himself. And then Thea was looking at them curiously. "Come on," Finn said, jokingly, "I didn’t hit you _that_ hard yesterday."

"It wasn’t hard," Bård said gratefully, rubbing his shoulder, "but it was in a really bad spot."

Afterwards, in the stairwell, Finn said, "I think you should call it a day."

"We have a show to do tomorrow," Bård pointed out. 

"Yeah, and you’re shuffling around like a zombie. You’re not going to get anything done, so instead of staying here banging your head against the wall, go and... take care of yourself."

"It’s not me that needs taking care of."

"Then take care of _him_."

Bård opened his mouth to ask where he got the nerve to say that, when he had dropped Vegard like a hot potato. He’d shown up today. Instead he said, "You’re right, F--Vegard. Thanks."

Finn shrugged uncomfortably.

"Finn... "

"Yeah?"

"I don’t know what happened, but... " Bård ran out of things to put next, and shook his head and spread his hands in a helpless gesture. 

"Me neither," Finn said bleakly. For a second, he spread his own arms in a way that suggested he was going to go for a hug, and this time Bård was going to let him. Instead he said, "Come on, I’m driving you home."

***

Melantha’s bladder woke her up at three in the morning. She frowned at the clock, and the empty place beside her. On her way to the bathroom, she was torn between worry and irritation; if something _wasn't_ wrong, he'd better have texted. She worried about Finn less now that the worst had happened and it had taken the form of a shouty man on a bicycle, but the stress wasn’t good for the baby. But just shy of the bathroom door, she heard a soft repetitive sound: the creak of the rocking chair they’d put in the nursery.

A couple of minutes later, relieved in every sense of the word, she padded up to the mansard room they'd converted to the baby’s room. Finn was there, rocking, staring fixedly at the crib. The ambient glow of Oslo slanted in through the window, showing her the tears on his cheeks. "Honey? Sweetness? Where were you? I worried."

"They took his magic." Finn was enunciating very carefully, in a way that let her know that he was extremely drunk. "They ripped it out."

She hugged him to her. "Oh, Finn," she murmured. "Oh, sweetie." She scrambled for something comforting to say. "Vegard’ll be okay. He’s human. He’s comfortable among them. He’s had magic for what, not even a year, and he doesn’t _need_ it, and he was using it to do dangerous things. He’ll be fine."

Finn pulled away from her, shaking his head. "It’s not that. Of course he’ll be all right; he’s Vegard. But he never... he never _said_ anything, Melly. Nobody told me. And when I got there--"

She froze. "You were there?"

"His face, Melly. I wanted to, I know it’s his choice but if I couldn’t stop them I wanted to at least be there for him, but I was the very last person he wanted to see. Nobody even told me, but when we got there it was too late. I watched them tear out his magic. He was disappointed to see me." He looked down at the fingers digging into his upper arm. "What?"

"Vegard doesn’t sound like a very safe person for you to be around right now. And he sounds like he knows it."

"I don’t care," Finn said. "All this is because of me."

"It is," she said forcefully. "Of course he was upset to see you; you were endangering everything he’s given you!"

He blinked. "I never thought of it that way."

"Start, then, Finn. Because maybe he’s trying to protect you, and you just won’t cooperate."

He shook his head, which appeared to make him dizzy, because he then rested his head against her arm with a little moan. "I’m not that important."

"You are to me," she said, and then wondered if she should have said that, but he seemed not to register.

***

The headline on Tuesday’s _Alpha Chronicle_ was, "Ylvis wizard off SCOT FREE: Cowardly extraction deal lets unrepentant blood mage free after two weeks!"

The show that week wasn’t their best... but it was _Finn’s_ best. He sparkled, to make up for Bård’s lack of lustre. He joked, he flirted with the guest--an achievement, since it was Johan Peder Olsen, touting his new book--and he let drop some truly horrendous puns. The atmosphere Finn created for Bård helped, and he found himself chiming in, laughing a little. Still, he was glad when it was over. One more week in the season.

He called every day, to check on Vegard’s progress. He went to the office dutifully. He knew that Finn was taking up huge amounts of the slack. Well, let him. Bård couldn’t fathom what was happening there, and he couldn’t imagine what had happened to drive apart two of the most amiable and forgiving men he knew. He knew he should ask about it, find out what exactly what was going on. But he would see Finn in the office, working with people, laughing with people, when it should be Vegard, and he didn’t trust himself not to be cruel. 

It was the weekend before Helene said that Vegard was ready for a guest. Bård found him, that overcast afternoon, on the living room couch in jogging pants and a sweater, sipping chamomile tea and gazing moodily at the Christmas tree and Oslofjord beyond. "Well, you’re surprisingly ambulatory!" Bård said, with a joviality he didn’t quite feel.

"It’s not my body that they messed up," Vegard told him, not looking at him. He put his cup down and ran a thumb back and forth along his jawline, closing his eyes.

"How do you feel?"

"Bad. Better than at the beginning." He sighed. "The pain is an eight, as opposed to a ten. In parts of me I didn’t even _believe_ in this time last year."

"God," Bård said, settling into a chair opposite him.

"Everything hurts. The smell of the air hurts. Good food hurts. Colours hurt. Thinking deeply hurts. I can see how--"

"How what?"

"I forget," Vegard muttered, passing a hand over his eyes. "I should never have agreed to this bloody thing."

"Done’s done," Bård said, getting up to touch his shoulder briefly.

"Yaaaarrrrghhh." Vegard squirmed away, watching him through half-lidded eyes. "Sorry, sorry, I can’t just yet."

Bård sat down again, trying not to feel hurt. "Jesus. What... what do your kids make of that?"

Vegard laughed softly, tears running freely down his cheeks. He paid them no mind. "They don’t know. I’m not going to tell them. My kids are worth a ten."

"What can I do?"

"Finish the season with Finn. I’m not going to make it back this year."

"Okay," Bård said. "It’s not the same."

"Of course it’s not. Finn’s Finn and I’m me. But I don’t want to worry about it. And he _is_ good."

"You watched?" Bård said, surprised.

"Sure. It hurt, but everything hurts. You sucked, though."

"It’s not the same," Bård said again. 

"That’s no excuse," Vegard said, sounding annoyed. "I can’t come back if there’s no show to come back to."

"Now that I know you’re all right, I’ll probably be better," Bård vowed.

"And your magic. Are you keeping up with your magic?"

"Not... not as such, no. Not right now."

"Do it," Vegard said, still not looking at him. "One of us needs to, and it obviously can’t be me."

"Why should I?" Bård demanded. "You nearly froze to death the first time we got mixed up in this stuff. The second time you had chronic fatigue for six months. And now you’ve missed nearly a month of your own show, and you look like hell, and you feel like hell, and you can’t even look at me. Vegard, why don’t we just let this go? It’s dangerous, and it’s not our world."

Vegard shut his eyes. He was so pale that he almost matched the couch, and quiet for so long that Bård thought he might have fallen asleep. Then he said, "Because... we can’t afford to turn our backs on anything that can hurt us this badly, especially when it tries to call it justice. Besides, it’s a part of me. And I can’t stand to lose any more parts of me right now." He rubbed his face with both hands. "I’m sorry. I just hit a wall."

"Sure," Bård said, getting to his feet, ashamed of his outburst. "Don’t worry about anything. Just get better." His hand hovered briefly over Vegard's shoulder, but then he remembered and withdrew. As he slipped out of the room, he saw Vegard draw his knees up and flop over on the couch.

Helene was in the kitchen. She smiled at him. "You must have been good for him," she said.

"I don’t know about that," Bård told her. 

"Well, I heard you talking, and that’s the most animated he’s been since he got home."

"I’m really worried about him," Bård said.

She sighed. "Me too. But... I have faith."

***

After the last show of the season, they all went out for beers. Finn stood at the bar, clowning around with Magnus, laughing and cracking jokes and taking selfies with the international fans, snapping pictures with Vegard’s phone.

Bård had done as much of the same as he could stand, and then excused himself. Now he sat at a table in a darkened corner with Calle, and every time a fan started in their direction, Finn or Magnus would call them back and ask a question, or pose for a photo, or order them a drink. "Where are you headed this winter, anyway?" Calle asked him.

"I haven't even thought about it," Bård said truthfully. "In fact, I think we'll delay it a bit this year. You?"

"Kaja got us a great deal on a Valentine’s Day cruise to Winnipeg."

"Nice."

"Bård, are you okay? It's not like I haven't been paying attention. You haven't been yourself lately."

Bård couldn't help it. He started to laugh, and he couldn't stop. He buried his forehead in the crook of his arm and wheezed until the tears came. Every so often he would look up, and Calle's perplexed smile would set him off again.

When the fit finally subsided, it left him feeling shaky and cleaned out. "Sorry," he said, shoulders still shaking, abdominal muscles sore, tears streaming down his cheeks, face still fixed in a grin he couldn't control. "Sorry. It's time for me to head out. I think I've had a bit too much." 

"You've had two beers in two hours," Calle protested. 

Bård hadn’t been talking about _beer_. "Even so, I'm tired." He raised his voice as he got to his feet. "Thanks for a good season, gentlemen! Everybody!" He bowed, and blew kisses at the room, and left. 

As he walked down the street, hands buried in his pockets, snow crunching under his boots, he heard running footsteps behind him, and turned, steeling himself to take one more selfie. But it was Finn who caught up to him, breath steaming, the tip of his nose already turning red in the cold. 

"Go on back," Bård said, motioning with his chin. "Enjoy your moment."

Finn looked at him like he'd suggested that they put on crinoline gowns and go grant wishes. "No. Bård, I appreciate the opportunity and the practice, and I'm glad that I could do something to help, but I am so tired, and tomorrow’s the Solstice, and I don't want to do this a second longer than I have to."

Bård stood staring at him for a long time, trying to formulate some kind of response to the man he'd asked to be Vegard, and then despised for trying to be Vegard. Finally, he beckoned to Finn, and folded him into his arms, and tilted his chin up to rest it on top of Finn's curly head. "Thank you," he said. "I owe you. _We_ owe you."

"You really don't," Finn said against his shoulder.

"I’ve been... "

"... under a lot of stress."

Bård’s irritation flared, that Finn would try to finish his sentences, but he fought his temper down. "I was going to say, I’ve been crankier than you deserve."

Finn pulled back a little, and looked him square in the eye. "I know exactly what you were going to say, and I wasn’t presuming to complete your thought, Bård. I was correcting you. You’ve been through hell. You and Vegard. I can’t undo what he did for me; I've stopped wishing that I could, because it's useless and ungrateful and I actually do like my life. But this, this was one thing that I could do, and I’m glad for the chance to do it."

Bård shook his head in mock exasperation. "You're like Frankenstein's monster, you know? Created to be a douchebag, but you turned on us and ran amok, spreading decency through the countryside."

Finn stuck his arms out in front of himself. "Rrrrrrrr." He enfolded Bård in a tight hug. "Keep me posted about Vegard. If you need anything, call me."

"I will," Bård promised, knowing already that he wouldn't. Finn had his own life, and the brothers had taken up quite enough of his time.

"Here," Finn said, sounding suddenly bleak. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Vegard’s phone. "He’s going to need this."

Bård pushed it back at him. "You hang onto that. Give it to him in person."

"But he isn’t--"

Bård was already walking away. Finn was very good at solving problems. Let him solve this one.

***

Now that the season was over, the office had closed for the holidays. Bård slept in on Wednesday. He ate a leisurely breakfast with his family, helped with the washing up, and then ducked into his studio and used the phone he’d gotten from Kai to dial a number.

It picked up on the third ring. "Bård! Happy Solstice!"

"Happy Solstice, Lindy. How are you?"

"Not a care in the world," the naiad purred. She spent her summers in the upstairs bathtubs and her winters in Spain. "It’s a good thing the nights are long, because they’re quite full. How about you? Celebrating with your kids?"

"In a few days," Bård said.

"Right, right. And listen, how’s your brother? I’ve been seeing terrible things in the news."

"That’s... actually what I was hoping to ask about. He’s in really bad shape, and I think he needs to see a doctor."

"Emergency?"

"Not really. He’s just in a lot of pain from the extraction. I’m worried about him, and I don’t even know who to call."

"Ohhhh," she said. "Well, look, you’re not going to get anyone on the holiday unless you want to take him into Emergency at Lady Brighid’s, but I don’t think they’ll treat him if the only problem is an extraction."

"I guess it doesn’t have to be today," Bård said. "I just want him to be able to have a nice Christmas with his family, without being in so much pain."

“Do a search on the Arvo Clinic," Lindy advised. "If anyone will help him, they will."

"Thank you, Lindy. I didn't actually mean to bother you on a holiday; you’re just the only Oslo person I can talk to right now without it being weird. But thank you."

"It's all right; it's a time for hospitality, and I enjoy yours so often that it's nice to be able to return the favour."

***

He called the Arvo Clinic the next morning, hoping that the Solstice didn't have anything like Boxing Day. "We're running a skeleton crew," the receptionist told him brightly, "but we're not busy, if you want to come in now."

"I'd be bringing you my brother," Bård told him. "He had his magic extracted last week, and... and he's not doing too well."

"Oh! Oh." The receptionist was silent for a long time. "I'm going to try to find someone else to help you."

"I see," Bård said woodenly. 

"No, it's not that. You'd have to bring him in, but it's better if someone can go to him. We can't spare anyone today, but I'll give you the number of someone who might." He rattled off the number, and Bård dutifully copied it down.

Two hours later, he was on Vegard's doorstep with Dr. Theodosia Kurael, an elderly lios alfr woman, at his side. Helene opened the door. "Hi, Bård," she said, giving him a quick hug. "I told him, and he really doesn't want to see anyone right now."

"I don't blame him," Dr. Kurael said with a smile. "Still, I'm here, and I might be able to help."

"She came all this way," Bård pressed.

"Come on in," Helene sighed. "If you can do something for his pain, I'm sure we'd all be very relieved."

She conducted them into the living room, while the doctor exclaimed over the house, which was still a bit in process but coming along. A few minutes later, Vegard appeared, frowsy, in jogging pants and a t-shirt, his feet bare, his hair sticking out in all directions. He glanced at them briefly before padding to the couch to sit beside Bård. 

"How are you, Vegard?" the doctor asked.

"Hurts," he said into his hand. "Look, thanks for coming, but I, I don't think this is a good idea. It's better than it was a couple of days ago. I'll just deal. It's okay."

Dr. Kurael pulled the ottoman over to sit across from him, and placed a gentle hand on his forehead. He grimaced in pain, but let her keep it there. She said, "I’m just going to take a look, all right?"

"It hurts enough on its own," Vegard said fretfully. "I can't imagine anything touching it."

"But when I take a look I’ll know how to make it better. Okay?" The doctor sketched a glyph in the air over Vegard’s temple.

Vegard wrapped his arms around his head and started to scream. One hand clawed at the glyph, to no effect. The doctor, frowning, dispelled it, and reached out, but Vegard lunged away from her touch, and buried himself in a corner of the couch, hiding his head in his arms, mewling like a trapped animal. He stayed like that despite the doctor’s and Bård’s efforts to coax him to calm down. 

After several minutes, the doctor beckoned Bård into the hallway. "I’m sorry," she said. "I don’t think there’s anything I can do for him."

"Can’t you, I don’t know, at least give him something for the pain?"

"He wouldn’t let me take much of a look at all, but based on what I saw, anything I could give him for this kind of pain is processed by receptors he just doesn’t have anymore. I could hit him with a Class Seven, and he’d sleep for awhile, but he’d still be in just as much pain, even asleep, and I wouldn’t be able to get any useful data." Her eyes ticked off to the side. "I probably shouldn’t be saying this, because it’s inconclusive, but he's not going to let me get more conclusive: first of all, the extraction area is massive. It looks like they had it calibrated for a lot more magic than he actually had. Secondly, it looks like more than extraction happened. He’s got multiple spells on him, layers of them."

Bård frowned. "What kind of spells?"

"I can’t tell. They’re all very subtle. I might not have seen them at all, except that they shimmer when they interfere with each other. The top one... _might_ have been a tracking spell. Like I said, I couldn’t properly tell. There wasn’t time to look."

"So... what do we do?"

She sighed. "You wait. He _is_ recovering. I’ll make some inquiries about those spells and contact you in a couple of weeks, how’s that?"

"That would be great," Bård said. "Listen, I don’t know how this works, and we don’t have standing. What do I owe you?"

She patted his arm. "I don't feel like I've done anything yet, but if you like, you can owe me a favour sometime."

***

Vegard was asleep on the living room couch when he felt a gentle little hand stroking his hair. There would be nothing like revelry this year, but touch had finally stopped being unbearable; that was a mercy.

For the barest moment he thought it might be his youngest son, awake and excited for Christmas Eve, but the hand was too callused to be a child’s, and when he opened his eyes, he saw a mournful wrinkled little face and a red cap. "Tomte," he said foggily, sitting up. He rubbed his temple. They'd talked this time last year, at the old place. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. He hadn't remembered his previous magical encounters back then, but he'd been whole. Seeing the nissen's stricken features, Vegard recalled that Tomte read the news. He wanted to say that he was sorry, but he wasn't sorry. He wanted to say that he wasn't the monster that they were making him out to be, but these days he wondered if maybe he was. 

In the end it was Tomte who spoke first. "Oh, Vegard," he said, voice thick with tears. "Oh, my dear Vegard, what did they do to you?" And the little man leapt up and clung fiercely to Vegard's upper arm, which was as much of a hug as his short arms would let him give.

***

First Magister Aurindael Nimarael had wasted no time in fulfilling his campaign promises. He took office on December 26, the first Monday after the Solstice, as was the custom, and that day the new Safer Communities Act was introduced to the Samkoma. It proposed harsher border controls, along with heavier penalties for certain crimes. Extraction, previously offered as an alternative to Innilokun Ríki, would be mandatory for several kinds of crimes, including blood magic, which would also now carry a minimum ten-year sentence. The Peace Division’s budget would be increased, and their powers of surveillance greatly expanded. One of the proposed measures was a realm-wide web that would listen for certain keywords, the speaking of which would trigger recording, logging, and even deployment of personnel. It was a mammoth project that would require huge amounts of magic, but the web would be constructed and operated by a private security contractor who had already agreed to supply the magic.

The act was four hundred and fifty-three pages long. When it was presented to the Samkoma, Nimarael invoked the Koirat of Urgency, and called the vote for the next day.

There was, of course, grumbling. Delphinia Leandriel went on record saying that in her opinion, this was a blatant attempt to use the language of emergency to circumvent the democratic process. Gisela Freidag, who had taken the night to read the act in its entirety and was now powered entirely by espresso, rage, and a focus charm that her doctor had warned her would rebound in unpleasant ways for the next week or so, pointed out several outrageous passages that were clear violations of the Grundvallaratriði. Some moderates, such as Kjersti Haniel and Moss Nissen, expressed concern that there was very little limiting language on this. 

But the Golds had a majority, and the only amendment passed was one proposed by Nils Tistel himself, demanding more specific language in several areas: conditions, time limits, thresholds. The others were defeated, and the act went into effect at the beginning of January. That first night a small number of Scandinavia’s politically engaged magical people consoled themselves by thinking that probably, almost certainly, however anxious they felt right now, anyone who meant to hurt them felt less safe right now than they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Aelfric's "The Destruction of Rome" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMuO_3T1LGc


	17. The Side Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back to work / A blue light / Kråkevisa / Bård does some gardening / You can’t touch this / Intervention? / A perfect system

January second was Vegard's first day back at the office. He paused at the entrance, wide-eyed, taking everything in.

"Hi hi," Kamilla said brightly. "Looks like someone celebrated too hard."

He gave her a small, pained, fragile smile, and crossed the room. Most of the greetings were quick and cordial: as far as most of the office staff were concerned, they’d seen him the week before Christmas. Raj called him over and asked him about some figures, and if he pored over the numbers for a little longer than was warranted for someone who had seen them two weeks ago, no one remarked upon it.

He sat down at his desk, booted up his computer, and started clicking through Finn’s updates to the Excel files.

Bård slipped in, and closed the door. "How is it?" he asked.

Vegard sat back, and took a deep breath. "It’s good to be back," he said. 

"Good."

"It’s surreal. It’s like... here’s my job, just waiting for me to take it up again. After everything else has changed so much, this feels the same. Oh hell." He opened his eyes very wide, and looked at the ceiling, and took deep breaths until the tears subsided. 

"I made sure Finn left it nice for you."

"Thanks. Thank him for me."

"Did he ever give you your phone back?" Bård asked.

"Oh... um. He's probably messaged me, but I haven't been checking. I don’t need it back. I got all the stuff I needed before I gave it to him, and Helene gave me a new iPhone anyway, and he can just, he can just have it, how's that? Honest, it's, it's really not good for Finn to be around me right now. But can we pay him a consulting fee or something?"

"Taken care of," Bård assured him. "Call me if you need anything." He opened the door and went out.

A few minutes later, Vegard heard a soft knock, and looked up to see Magnus. "Hi hi!"

"Vegard," Magnus said, ducking to get through the doorway. More softly he said, "Really Vegard?"

Vegard gave him a small nod. 

A brilliant grin lit the younger man’s face. "It’s good to see you. You look great."

Vegard couldn’t help but grin back. "It’s good to be back."

"Are you... that is... the last time I saw you, you were... under the weather."

Vegard had to smile at the understatement. "I’m a lot better now. Not a hundred percent, but better."

"And how’s your cousin?" Magnus asked.

"Gone back home," Vegard said. "To his family. It was nice to have him here, but they need him there now. I’m just glad he came up."

"Me too," Magnus said. "He seemed like a nice guy."

"He is," Vegard sighed. "So. What do _you_ think I should know in order to be caught up?"

***

Bård had brought fish and salad for lunch, and early in the afternoon he went to the break room to heat it up. On his way, he looked in on Vegard. Texting on his new iPhone, it looked like, from the way he stared intently at his lap. Well, reading a text. His thumbs weren’t moving. As Bård looked away he thought that the blue glow shining on Vegard’s face might be, ever so subtly, the wrong colour, but when he looked back it was fine.

He ate in front of his desk, working on a list of what they’d need for the gig in April. He kept feeling eyes on him, and that was good, that was okay, because if he was the most interesting thing in the office right now, it meant no one had noticed anything different about Vegard.

It was _so_ good to have Vegard back. He’d forgotten how good it was. Of course, while it was all business on the office floor of his brain, in the back rooms hilarity was percolating, and every so often he would turn from one list and add to another, a list of ideas that he would have to work on with Vegard and Calle, so that he could get them out of his head and focus on the task at hand. 

Bård finished his food and set the dishes aside, head abuzz with thoughts of the props they'd need. He went over his list, and put checkmarks next to some items that they could ask about at the venue, and added a couple of other things that he was just assuming they had, with question marks next to them. If they didn't have them, Heidi would arrange everything.

It smelled awfully fishy in here, though. Right, his dishes. He took them to the kitchen. He saw that Vegard was still texting or whatever. Probably back and forth with Helene. 

On his way back to his office Bård knocked on Vegard’s door. Vegard startled, the thing he’d been looking at flying out of his hands. It wasn’t a phone. It looked like a small glowing blue orb, a little dimmer than a witchlight. Bård saw it for only a fraction of a second, and then Vegard was between him and it, scrambling around on the floor.

The orb rolled out from under the desk and bounced off Bård’s shoe. Bård bent to pick it up. 

Vegard let out a cry, and his hand fell on the thing, snatching it away before Bård’s fingers could make contact. "Sorry," he panted, "sorry. It’s, um. Not good to touch that. Not for you."

"What is it?" Bård asked. "Is it like, a magic prescription or something?"

Vegard pocketed it. "Um. Sort of."

Sort of? "Does it help with the pain?" Bård asked, making his voice gentler.

"Yeah. You could say that. Yeah."

"If it helps," Bård said. "Listen, I had some ideas for April. I was thinking I’d run them by you and Calle after hours, but then I thought that might be a little heavy. Especially if you’re having pain still."

"No, I'm good," Vegard said. 

"You sure?"

"A 2 AM marathon might be much on my first day back, but... I just want to do my job, Bård. I really want to do my job."

"You're already looking kind of..." Bård waggled his hand, doubtful.

"I want to do my job."

***

It was seven, now, and as the conversation progressed around him, Bård found himself wishing for the third or fourth time that day that his link with Vegard still worked. This time last year he hadn't even known it existed. He wondered, idly, what would have happened if they'd lost it in the eight years before finding out about it again. Would either of them have known? Would he have had a sense of loss, but no idea where it came from? Would other people have noticed they were uncharacteristically out of sync? Would people notice _now_? Perhaps not--he had, after all, worked with Finn for a month. But Finn had been using Vegard's material, for the most part, and they had arranged the show to not have to depend on those little moments of telepathy. That was going to be hard in April, though, considering what they had planned.

He shook his head, and tried to pay attention to Calle, who occupied Vegard's chair while Bård perched next to Vegard on Vegard's desk. "You know, you'd come in with a sort of thing like, 'Da-da, da-da-da..." he sang, snapping his fingers. Bård took up the thread of it with him, and they both looked expectantly at Vegard, who only smiled, and shook his head, and studied the ceiling.

"What's wrong with it?" Calle asked. 

"It sounds great," Vegard said. "I'm just... suddenly I'm very tired."

Calle went very still. "Summer tired?"

"Not quite that bad. I had a rough Christmas. Wasn't well."

"Anything to do with the attack on the sixth?"

Vegard sucked in breath, and looked sharply at Bård. "I didn't know you knew about that," he said finally.

"I was there," Calle said, frowning. "I'm the one who wanted you to go to the hospital, remember?"

"Right, sorry," Vegard said. "That whole night is kind of a blur. But listen, I have to go home, but Bård, there are some things we need to go over first."

Calle gave them a little sideways look, and got up. "All right. I'm heading out. Maybe we can pick this up tomorrow. Have fun in Mount Doom."

When the door closed, Vegard turned, ran a hand over the side of his face, and said, "Finn too?"

"Yeah. He went to a, a pro-you rally, and got beaten up. I forgot about it completely," Bård confessed. "Well. He was bruised. You were stabbed."

"God. Jesus." Vegard shook his head. "What was he doing at a pro-me rally?"

Bård shrugged. "Showing his support, I guess."

"I haven’t talked to him in nearly six weeks. He should hate me by now."

"What’s up with that anyway?" Bård demanded. 

Vegard didn’t answer him. "This was exactly what I didn't want to happen." He spent a long time looking up at the skylights. "I'm bloody useless," he said quietly.

"What?"

Vegard drove his fists into his thighs and shrieked, "I'm bloody USELESS! He's off getting beaten _up_ and I gave up my _magic_ , I gave up _everything_!" He punctuated this by ramming his heels into the desk again and again.

Bård waited. Without their link, the storm had caught him unawares, but there was still nothing to do but let Vegard rage it out. Finally, when his brother slouched down on the desk, panting and forlorn, Bård put a careful hand on his arm. Vegard whimpered, and flinched away. Bård withdrew and gave him a few more minutes. Then he said, "This time last year, you didn't even have magic."

Vegard laughed softly, and then he looked up at the skylights again. "I." Then he looked down at his hands. Then he said, "I made my magic with music."

"Yeah," Bård said. When it became clear that he was supposed to infer something from this he said, "I can’t read your mind anymore. Is it... are the memories painful?"

"No." Vegard grinned mirthlessly, shaking his head. "Well I mean yes, but... I gave up everything."

"They took... wait." Bård felt an icy weight settle in the pit of his stomach. "Wait. Okay. What does this mean? They took...?"

"It’s hard to describe," Vegard said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I can still _enjoy_ music, now I can. It was one of the things that really hurt at first. I can, my brain can still understand what’s going on. Oh gee, a minor fourth. Mixolydian scale. C chords. I get all that. But I... I can’t _feel_ it like I used to. When I try, it hurts. When I sing, I sound like hell. The whatever-it-is, the place I need to be where it will sound good, it’s closed off to me now. I can’t get there. It hurts to try."

"Your music is gone," Bård said. He squeezed Vegard’s shoulder. Then he drew his knees up, hugging one, resting his chin on it. "Well."

"Well," Vegard agreed, letting his legs swing as they dangled over the side of the desk. 

"In the fall you asked me, if you lost your voice would I still sing? I never thought that would be anything other than hypothetical."

"You’re keeping up with your magic, though, right?" Vegard demanded.

"I am. I feel pretty pathetic, but I am."

"Good. That you’re keeping it up. I wish I hadn’t done this, but I did. It's all up to you now."

Bård hopped off the desk, and started pacing. "How’s the pain right now?"

"There but bearable. For now. I’m going to have to rest soon. Why?"

Bård pointed at the MIDI keyboard against one wall. "Show me?"

Vegard seemed to consider. Then he blew a curl out of his eyes, and pushed himself off the desk. "Yeah. What the hell, I hurt anyway." He sat down, turned it on, and played a bit of "Kråkevisa." His fingers moved across the keyboard absolutely correctly. The performance was the very pinnacle of adequacy.

"It’s not wrong," Bård said carefully.

"I know. It just has no feeling. And whatever would let me play it with feeling, I just don’t have anymore."

Bård leaned against the wall. "I wish we were still connected. I wish I could see what’s going on."

Vegard turned off the keyboard and leaned back, eyes shut. "You don’t wish that," he said softly. He stood up, and put on his coat, swaying a little. "I have to go home."

***

The next morning, as soon as he got dressed, Bård ducked back into the bathroom and made a phone call. "Hi, Dr. Kurael. This is Bård Ylvisåker calling." He gave his number. "You were kind enough to see my brother the day after the Solstice, and I was just wondering if you’d found anything, or if we could make a followup appointment." He rattled off his number again, and then Vegard’s for good measure. "If you could call me back as soon as possible, I’d be grateful. Bye."

Vegard was in his office when Bård got there, laughing and joking with Calle. They waved him in, and planned more of the April show. The atmosphere was a little careful, but good. Music did not come up.

Vegard seemed better today. Bård wondered if he was just getting back into the swing of things and feeling more like himself, or if last night’s outburst had been something he needed. Probably a combination of both. But during lunch, Bård happened to glance into Vegard’s office, and saw his face bathed in that eerie blue light. He made a mental note to ask the doctor about that when she called. 

He was back in his own office when his call was returned. When he saw it was the doctor, he answered immediately. "Hello?"

"Mr. Ylvisåker, this is Dr. Kurael’s office."

"Yes, hi! Thanks for getting back to me. Can we make another appointment? I could bring him in this time." 

"I’m very sorry... " The receptionist’s voice shook a little. "Dr. Kurael is dead."

"What?"

"There was a hit-and-run outside of her apartment building two days ago. She was on the Branch List, but they couldn’t get to her in time. I’m so sorry."

"Me too," Bård said, stunned. "I mean... for you. I’m sorry."

"Thank you," the receptionist said. "We’re all still reeling. Thank you. We’re calling all the patients, and then I saw... Anyway. Thank you. Goodbye."

For a moment, standing there with the phone silent in his hand, Bård allowed himself to entertain the possibility that it had been deliberate--that the Bright Court so hated Vegard that they would punish any attempt to help him. But that was getting a bit full of themselves, wasn’t it? Even they couldn't believe Vegard was a threat anymore. 

Vegard had been nullified. 

Bård’s hands, as he slid his phone into his pocket, shook--a little with fear, and a lot with anger.

 _Do_ I _want to be a threat?_

The thought was tempting, a little coil of rage that he fed, experimentally. Surely there were people out there who were everything the Bright Court feared. Who could put him in touch with them? Per, probably. But even as the idea started to materialize, he loosed his hold on it. He had very little power of his own, a family, and a brother who was a sitting duck now. And proof that they could do whatever they wanted to him. He sat heavily. 

Bård didn't have a Memory Palace of the type advocated by Cicero. He had learned to place the things he needed to remember along the route from his home in Fana to his school. Now, he leaned back in his chair and forced himself to relax every muscle. He closed his eyes. He was outside of the school, on the sidewalk in front of the small lawn, in warm spring weather. He envisioned revenge as a shimmering, seething ball of red and silver. He went to an oak tree at the side of the street, and scooped aside the dirt with one hand, and buried his revenge at the base, conjuring up the feel of the earth between his fingertips and the smell of freshly cut grass. _Not now_ , he told it, _but stay right here, in case I need you later._ He covered it up with his hands, and patted the ground as if planting a seed. Some impulse made him kiss two fingertips and press them to the earth. Then, feeling, unaccountably, as if he'd accomplished something, he turned his attention to the outside world, and opened his eyes.

Calle was standing over him, arms folded. "Take. A. Vacation."

Bård blinked up at him. "Huh?"

"Vegard’s been staring at his phone for the past fifteen minutes. You’re asleep. You’re both wrecks, and there’s no reason for you to be here. Season’s over. The two of you should be playing with your kids on separate beaches, very far apart from each other."

Bård gave him a crooked smile. "We can’t do that right now, Calle."

"Okay, fine, but then you go and take care of whatever weird wizarding thing you’re mixed up in, and _then_ you take time off. And then you come back refreshed-- _happy_ \--and make some good TV."

Bård stared up at him, trying to formulate some sort of response. He couldn’t think of anything.

Calle backed towards the door. "I’m not the boss here. I can’t make you do anything. I can just tell you what I see. Think about it, okay?"

When he was gone, Bård sat for another moment in silence. Then he pulled out Kai’s old phone, and went to the Wild Hunt, and ran a search on "blue orb pain relief." The top results were about a massager. He tried "blue orb drug" instead, and got a couple of gaming sites and an electronica act. Searching "blue orb addiction" got him even more gaming sites and a vintage communications shop. He put the phone away, and got back to work.

***

Bård spent the rest of the week watching. Vegard worked diligently on anything that didn’t have to do with music. He didn’t finish as many of Bård’s sentences as before, but he got the jokes, and contributed his own. He was a little less gregarious. And he seemed to spend every spare moment staring at the thing that was not a phone.

The next Tuesday, Bård peeked in on Vegard at lunch, and caught him sitting at his desk staring into the glowing blue. Vegard saw him watching, and stuffed the orb into his pocket. "Yeah?"

"I’m worried about you. With that thing."

"You don’t need to be, Bård."

"I am, though. Are you in that much pain?"

Vegard shrugged. "Every day it gets a little better. Or I get more used to it, which works out to be the same."

"So... do you still need that thing as much?"

Vegard sighed, and smiled wearily. "It's a bit hard to explain, Bård, but I really do."

Bård’s hand darted forward, and when Vegard finally twigged and tried to move the chair away, Bård got behind him and planted his feet on either side of the casters, and used his hip and one arm to pin both of Vegard’s arms as he groped for Vegard’s pocket and went fishing for the orb.

"Bård, no! Bård, _stop!_ " 

Vegard snapped his head back, catching Bård on the chin, and rolled the chair back hard. Bård lost his balance and fell in a heap against the wall. 

In an instant Vegard was out of the chair and crouched over him, offering a hand. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Bård said, staring wide-eyed at his brother. Maybe it was the loss of their link, but that had not felt like roughhousing. That had felt like desperation. "I... I just wanted to see it."

Vegard pulled him up. "You can’t. If you could, I would let you, but unless someone gives this to you you seriously cannot touch it."

"Or what?"

Vegard closed his eyes, and shook his head. "I don’t, I don’t want to answer a bunch of questions about it. It’s just something that I need right now."

***

On Thursday night, Bård and Vegard left the office together. Then Bård patted his pockets, and swore. "My phone," he said. "You go on. If I catch up to you, I catch up, but don’t miss a tram just for my sake."

Vegard gave him a shrug and a nod. Bård ran back upstairs and turned the lights on in the main part of the office, but not in his own. Maybe he was being paranoid, but he felt watched. He waited in his darkened office until he saw Vegard get on the tram. Then he pulled his phone out of the inner pocket where it had been all along, and called Helene. 

After the customary greetings, she said, "What’s up? Is Vegard doing all right?"

"Ah... he's on his way home right now. He’s _okay_... "

"But... ?" she prompted.

"I don’t know if you’ve seen him with, like, this blue thing... ?"

"Yeah," Helene said guardedly. 

"I was just wondering about it. He says he’s been using it for the pain."

"Hm," she said. "It’s a thing he brought home from the hospital."

Bård frowned. He didn’t remember them giving Vegard anything on that awful Monday, but he hadn’t exactly been thinking straight. "This is going to sound wild, and I’m sorry: I’ve been watching him since he got back, and I’m a little concerned that he might be addicted to it."

"Is it affecting his work?" Helene asked.

"Not... not yet. Not more than the other thing. But I’m worried about him, Helene. I think... maybe it would be worth the two of us talking to him about this."

She laughed softly. "I don’t think so, Bård."

"Aren’t you worried about him?"

"Of course I’m worried about him. He’s been through hell. He’s a wreck. But I also know that what he gets from that blue ball is helping hold him together."

"Okay. I see. But if I... if it gets to be a problem... "

"If it gets to be a problem, you do what you have to do. He’d be the first person to understand."

***

As the security operation had become more and more integral to the company, and as Cam grew old enough to miss Mama and Papa, it had made sense to acquire property closer to the southern complex. Fødalensfelles wasn’t exactly convenient, but it was pleasant, and until last year it had been outside of the bubble of noise. They owned a pleasant six-room cottage on the outskirts of the grove, and rented a house that had been converted to offices within the old city wall. The front room was reception; upstairs were individual offices; and what had been the dining room was now a boardroom in which five lios alfar sat.

"It’s your meeting, Lakrima," Ardriel said, tenting his fingers under his chin.

"I thought we should talk about Bilden," Lakrima Juniel said.

Lavinia shrugged. "There’s nothing _to_ talk about. We have one more replacement to make. The system worked the way it’s supposed to. The way it’s worked for eight years."

"This is the third time, though," Ziniel Bairdriel said. He was the oldest member of the board, "Three in three weeks. We have to assume it’s organized."

Aun Harael shrugged. "Let them organize! It takes care of itself."

Juniel said, "I think we should put people on them."

"Every single one?" Lavinia demanded. "Do you know what that would _cost_?"

"Not to mention," Harael said, "it would draw attention to them, and that’s the last thing we want. Look, do we have any idea who’s behind this?"

Ardriel consulted his notes. "Two men, one woman. Two svarts, one pixie. One of the svarts was clean. The other had done six months for dark magic, but I couldn’t pull up details because she was underage when it happened. And the pixie has a series of assaults. Nothing major; just a thing for brawling. I’ve got Konglen looking for more commonalities, but there seems to be nothing so far that connects all three of them."

"And they’re all dead," Harael said. "I don’t see why this is an issue. We already pay Euriel a salary to keep an eye on this stuff. The spot checks have worked for years."

"What if it’s the humans?" Juniel said. At their incredulous stares, she said, "We’ve had to remove an awful lot of them this year. Not to mention, we know that Vegard Ylvisåker’s changeling and the Aruviel harpy have been nosing around for months. What if this is their doing? What if they want revenge for Vegard’s extraction?"

"Wickedly powerful and powerfully wicked," Lavinia mused. It had been a headline in _The Alpha Chronicle_ in the days before Vegard’s sentencing. "He was a symbol. He sold newspapers. But he’s not going to be any threat to us or anyone anymore."

"His brother? The changelings?"

"We’re watching them all. They’ve been very well behaved since the extraction. I think that drove it home more than anything _we_ could have done."

Juniel folded her arms over her chest. "They’re not the only ones we should be watching. We need to guard our assets."

"They guard themselves," Harael said irritably. "It’s a perfect system."

"The cost would be prohibitive," Ardriel observed. "Hiring even one person to guard every location on all three shifts, would necessitate nearly one hundred people. Over one hundred, if they have weekends off."

Bairdriel raised an eyebrow. "We have it, don’t we?"

"But people will see the money move, and start asking questions," Lavinia reminded him. "We’d have to justify it to the full board. Not to mention the shareholders."

"Listen, kid," Bairdriel said, "screw the shareholders. I keep saying, and I’m gonna keep saying it until it gets through, you can’t keep cutting corners. You’re talking about protection for our single biggest asset here. You think you’re saving money and magic, but you end up having to spend twice as much of everything to clean up the mess it makes. And you’re saddled with shareholders who don’t know anything about what you’re doing, who are used to you tying yourself into knots to get them their twenty percent profit increase and won’t respect that you’ve got stuff to look after. It’s not worth it. Get your hundred people, pay them decently, and make sure the job is done right."

"With all due respect, Ziniel," Ardriel said, "it’s a different world now. We have to work smart. We don’t have the luxury of indiscriminately throwing money at problems, especially those that haven’t materialized yet."

"A corpse in the middle of our stone circle is pretty bloody material!" Juniel snapped.

"As a businessman--" Bairdriel began.

"As a businessman," Harael thundered, "I am absolutely certain that these things don’t need guards, because as an _engineer_ , I know messing with them is a suicide mission. And now whoever’s been messing with them knows it too."

Ardriel’s eyes ticked from Bairdriel to Juniel. "Vigilance, friends," he said gently. "Not paranoia. A little bit of an edge, to keep everyone on their toes. We can’t let it consume us. When the replacement is ready, we make it a little harder for them to strike unannounced. We keep Euriel apprised. We trust Aurindael to be duly grateful for the support we have always given him. The web is going to solve a lot of our problems, as well as his. But if someone is organizing against us, I think they’ve gotten the message, by now, that it’s not going to work."

And sure enough, after that everything was quiet.

For a few weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Curve's "Recovery" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbph6_XObnU


	18. Tough Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Per Kristtorn gets another phone call / The travellers’ prayer / Hiatus / The holy grail

On the weekend, Bård called Per Kristtorn. The young svartalfr—now repeating his freshman year at Varggrav Magitekniske Universitet--was the son of a high-ranking but now-deceased friend of Gisela’s who Vegard had met in 2007, and an inveterate Ylvis fanboy. Bård hated to take this kind of problem to him, but last year in Varggrav Per had established himself as a young man who knew how to get things, and was eager to help his idols.

"This is an unbelievably uncomfortable question for me," Bård told him, when they'd dispensed with the usual pleasantries, "but I want to ask about drugs."

After a hesitation--Bård was convinced he could hear his rating on Per’s Respect-O-Meter plummeting--Per said, "Recreational?"

"Pain relief. Prescription I think."

Per sounded relieved. "For Vegard!"

"Yeah."

"I mean, not that I’m judging. It just didn’t sound like _you_. But, okay. I wish I could help, Bård, but--this is about the extraction, right?"

"Right."

"Here’s the thing: he’s much better off with, I dunno, something like weed, probably. Something nonmagical, something that will make him relaxed and floaty. I know nothing that works on nerves is gonna help, because it’s not in his nerves, right? But you can get him high, and that’ll help more than anything else. Because extraction takes out, like, even the entry points, for anything magical to be able to work on him."

"I’m trying to identify something he’s already taking," Bård explained. "I want to know if it’s dangerous. If it’s addictive. I was hoping I could describe it to you."

"And you’re sure it’s magical? Like, what makes you think it’s magical?"

"It’s a glowing blue ball."

There was a silence on the other end of the line. And then Per said, "Bård, you want to leave that alone."

"He’s already using it, though. All the time. But, you know what this is?"

"I do, Bård. And I’m saying to you, leave it alone. Don’t touch it, don’t talk about it, just leave it. Don’t worry about it, but just... leave it."

"What about my brother, though?"

"Just let him be. For now. He’s not hurting anyone, is he?"

"Well, no, but what about _him_?" When there was no answer from Per, Bård pressed, "At least, is there anything I should watch for?"

Per sighed. "You’ll know it when you see it."

"And when I see this thing that I’ll know, what do I do?"

"I’m sorry, Bård, I know I’m being really frustrating, and I don’t know how to tell you something that will make it better. But you’ll know what to do, too. Or, you’ll find out."

"Per, is this going to kill him?"

"I don’t... look, I have to go. I’m sorry, Bård." And Per broke the connection.

***

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We’re, ah, adjusting our course to avoid some unusual radio interference. We’re over the park, and if you look out the windows on your left side right now, you’ll see Galdhøpiggen, the highest peak in Norway."

Rebekah looked down and saw snow-covered peaks. Then it seemed as if the terrain below her flickered. Suddenly in the far distance, where there had been only sloping ground and a valley furred with conifers, there was the stuttering image of a cylindrical building topped with a dome and set into the side of a mountain. 

All at once, the plane went silent.

Amid the soft, shocked cries of passengers, a flight attendant leapt to her feet and said in a clear, even voice, "Everyone stay calm. Please, everyone, return to your seats, do up your seatbelts, stow your belongings under your seat, and return your tray tables to a locked and upright position, and our very well trained crew will do everything we can to ensure your safety."

Rebekah’s tray table was already up, and for an hour’s flight it had hardly seemed worth it to take her seatbelt off. Now, she stuffed her backpack under her seat, reminding herself vigorously that even if the unthinkable happened, the survival rate for plane crashes was ninety percent. After a moment’s thought, she pulled out her mobile phone, wiped her eyes, and turned on the camera. Between the lines of interference that stitched up and down the screen, and the darkness of the plane’s interior, it was hard to see anything, so she angled the phone until she was at least silhouetted against the mountain ranges. "Mom, Dad, Sarah... and Bubbe and Zayde, and Auntie Rachel and Uncle Zvi... we’re having a bit of engine trouble. I’m probably going to be all right, but just in case I’m not, I wanted to say, I love you very much, and I don’t regret a single moment. Of anything. Be well." 

She was going to start crying if she kept on, so she flashed the camera a brave little smile, clicked it off, and shoved the phone back in her pocket. Now people around the cabin were starting to panic. The blond giant across the aisle from her sat rigid in his seat, eyes leaking. She gave him an encouraging smile. "Are you religious?" she asked him. 

"Thinking about it," he said in a small voice. 

"Pray with me," she said, taking his hand and translating the Teflat HaDerech on the fly. "May it be Your will, Lord, our God and the God of our ancestors, that You lead us toward peace, guide our footsteps toward peace, and make us reach our desired destination for life, gladness, and peace. May You rescue us from the hand of every foe, ambush along the way, and from all manner of punishments that assemble to come to earth. May..."

A sound made them both cringe in their seats, but it was the engines coming back to life. The interior lights came back on as the two of them joined in the applause. 

"Well, _I’m_ relieved," the pilot said over the intercom. This was greeted by nervous laughter. "We could have glided into a closer airport, but I’m sure we’re all just as glad to be headed to our destination. Everything looks normal, and I’ve just informed air traffic control that we’re okay."

Hours later, safely on the ground (with the prayer completed under her breath, in Hebrew, in a spare moment), Rebekah tuned into NRK P1 to hear whether the news had had anything to say about the scare. It was thus that she heard about the mysterious death of Leif Sæther on the slopes of Rolandsnosi. Her flight got a mention right afterward. From the time given in the news story, it sounded like Sæther’s last moments had occurred while she was passing overhead, just to the north of him. She had been so, so lucky. He hadn’t.

She pulled up the video, wondering what to do with her message to her family. Record something lighthearted and warm after, about being okay? Erase it altogether? She started it from the beginning, to see exactly what she’d said. And frowned. And played it again. And when she sent the video, she sent it--with a little note apologizing for the static--to NRK instead. By the time the video aired, she was safely back in Scotland.

***

Bård gave it another week. He watched Vegard carefully. Every time he passed Calle’s desk, Calle would catch his eye and mouth, " _Vacation._ " And he’d clearly spoken to Magnus, because Magnus had taken to leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, chin tilted up as if he were sunbathing, whenever Bård passed him, or adjusting imaginary sunglasses and sipping imaginary drinks. They probably thought they were being hilarious. They probably would have been, if Bård wasn’t so worried that he would find his brother dead, or slowly melting, or turning into a gargoyle, or something that he would recognize when he saw it, when it was already too late.

A strange thing had been happening to him lately. It was more than just being on edge; he felt like he was _performing_. Inside his house, he was okay, but whenever he stepped outside he couldn’t shake the feeling that there were cameras rolling. It was the stress, he told himself. 

He read everything he could about magical addictions. It was some of the scariest stuff he could imagine. He watched. He waited. He agonized.

He found himself thinking more and more about what Calle had said. Bård wasn't going anywhere, not when Vegard was like this, but Calle was basically right: they had plenty of time before April. They'd gotten a lot of the groundwork laid this month. If Vegard needed time to sort himself out, there was time. His brother was pretty functional now, not missing work, not shirking his duties, but there was no guarantee that that would be true in a few months. 

On Friday, he waited until the office had cleared out for the night. Then, steeling himself, he emerged from own office and knocked on Vegard’s door. 

"Yeah," Vegard said, and as Bård walked in, he was in the process of slipping the orb into his pocket. He eyed his brother warily, which hurt.

Bård sat down in the other chair. "Vegard," he said carefully, beginning the recitation he’d practiced over and over at his own desk, and on the tram, and in the moments before he slept at night, "ever since you got back, I’ve been really concerned about you."

"Yeah," Vegard said. He had taken up a paper clip, and was busily straightening it.

"I know you’ve been through a lot, and you’ve lost a lot, and you’re in a lot of pain."

"Yeah."

"I’ve been watching you with that blue thing. Helene says it helps you through. I don’t know what it does, and no one will bloody tell me, but I’m just really worried that you’re addicted."

Vegard quirked his mouth. "That’s an interesting way of putting it."

"Can you tell me a better way to understand what’s been going on here?"

Vegard seemed to think it over. "No," he said finally. "I can’t."

“I want to help. If you tell me how.” He waited, but Vegard only finished straightening out the paper clip, and then started bending it back into shape again. “How do I help?”

Vegard looked, for a moment, very very sad. Then his mouth tightened into a poor parody of a smile. “Don’t worry about me, Bård. When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”

Bård took a deep breath. "I just... I think it would be best if you took a break from Concorde. We’re on hiatus. There’s nothing you need to come in for..."

Vegard brayed with incredulous laughter. "Are you _firing_ me?"

"What? No! Even if I could, I _wouldn't_. It’s not like that, Vegard. Please don’t make it like that. I’m just... strongly suggesting that you take time off for a side project. And that side project is looking after yourself."

Vegard stared at him for a few long seconds, taking deep breaths, eyes wide and hurt. Bård braced himself. 

Then Vegard's brow furrowed, and he seemed to calm himself down. "Okay," he said.

"Okay?" Bård echoed.

"You’re right. I’m useless here."

"No, Vegard, that’s not what I meant! I still want to work with you. I just need you to be in better shape than you are right now."

"I understand, Bård." 

"I’m not sure you do."

"No, I do," Vegard assured him. He rose from his chair, and unplugged his laptop, and gathered up the cord. Briefly, his brown eyes met Bård’s blue ones. "I need me to be in better shape too."

"You’re going to get help, right? I mean, that’s what I need. For you to get help."

Vegard pulled the blue ball out of his pocket, tossed it, and caught it. "I’ve _got_ help," he said bitterly, slipping it back into his pocket. 

"No, Vegard, no, that’s not... it’s not..."

Vegard shook his head. He put on his coat and picked up his laptop case. Bård tried to block his way.

Vegard put a hand on his shoulder and gave him a tight, hurt smile as he edged past.

"But keep me updated, right? Call me? Let me know how you’re doing?"

Pausing at the door, Vegard met Bård's eyes and said, slowly and carefully, "When I need you, I will call you." 

Then his footsteps sounded on the outer office floor. And then on the stairs. And then they were gone. 

Bård reeled over to the chair, and dropped. He sat behind Vegard’s desk for a long time, head in his hands. What had he just done? He’d been prepared for tears. He’d been prepared for Vegard to blow up at him, or get defensive. Was this how everything was going to end, with Vegard gently agreeing that there was a problem and gently refusing to do anything about it and gently taking his leave?

Eventually, he sighed, and heaved himself into an upright position. He’d done what he could. Vegard had chosen to react the way he did, and Bård supposed there were a lot worse choices he could have made. He made himself get up and pack up his own computer and put on his coat, trying to ignore the feeling of eyes on him. He had thought to take the tram home, but he started out thinking he'd walk to the next stop, and the next, and the next, and at some point he gave up the pretense and just walked, through the frigid Oslo streets, until he reached his house.

***

Old Aker Church, in St. Hanshaugen, Oslo, had been built in 1080, over an old silver mine. To magical sight, it shone--not because of its great age, but because of the weight of centuries of observation and belief and devotion and regard and awe that infused it, overlaid until it formed a shimmering, shifting patina, layer upon layer upon layer of power.

It was a source of endless frustration to the magical people of Scandinavia--which might have been why the humans of yore had done it. The god who could use all this power properly, if he existed at all, never visited. His followers had, by and large, forsworn it. For anyone else to try, it was very volatile, and considered exceedingly bad form. 

A use could be found for it, however, if you were clever. If you had to hide something magical and immensely powerful in the middle of the largest urban centre in the country, all of that useless power created marvellous interference.

Last month, the body of an unidentified man had been discovered in the apse. There had been surprisingly little followup from the authorities, and all of the records had been misplaced, those who were responsible for these things curiously incurious. The diocese had nevertheless reacted by adding four new beds to the shelter they sponsored, by putting in CCTV, and by adding a better lock on the front doors. 

At three on Saturday morning, all four CCTV cameras started to roll and fuzz out.

If they had been working, the outside camera would have shown that at four, a man in a hoodie climbed the stairs and picked the new lock. He slipped into the church.

The inside cameras would have shown him standing for a moment in the darkness, as if to let his eyes adjust. 

The cameras would not have shown the silver chalice on the altar--for some reason the chalice only ever showed up on CCTV as lines of wavering static--but they would have shown the intruder shuffling forward in the dimness and pulling a pad of what looked like paper out of his pocket. He tore off a sheet, and dropped it into the chalice. From another pocket he took a small jar, of the sort that held cold cream, and dipped his finger in. It came up dry, but if the cameras had been working, they would have shown his hand consumed by glare. When he put the lid back on, and touched his finger to the paper in the chalice, it blazed up and burned away to nothing. 

If the cameras had been working, they would have whited out, then. And to a magic-sensitive mind, the resulting discharge would have been an aurora from afar, a lethal inferno up close. 

But the intruder was still standing, one arm thrown over his eyes. The cameras would not have picked up his soft little cry, the cry of someone who did not expect that to hurt as much as it did. They would only have shown him reeling backwards to lean on a pew, clutching at his head, breathing hard. 

When he had recovered a little, he shuffled away from the chalice, once barking his shins on a pew, and slipped back out through the front door, making sure the lock engaged behind him. There was no mundane sign that he’d ever been there at all. The chalice was undamaged, and when the cameras resumed normal functioning an hour later, it would appear clear and solid and unmolested. But camouflage was camouflage, and it would be a very long time before anyone noticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Susanne Sundfør's "Delirious" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdSB_PcBW3k


	19. Travel Sketches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anchor at Byrknes / To find himself / Bård crosses the line / A sucker for an old friend / Home / The turning point for Robbie Cockle / Five Foolish Virgins / A backpacker by Lillehammer / Santa rents a car in Gjøvik

Alf Sæternes, nineteen years gone now, had donated the anchor. It was one of several that sat in the attic of the old house at the Gulen Fiskarbondemuseum in the fishing village of Byrknes. They had all come from the Sæternes farm, but the expert who'd come up from the University of Bergen a few years ago had confirmed what everyone at the museum suspected: this anchor, a sturdy wooden frame formed around a rock, was the oldest. A full thousand years, give or take. 

The Gulen Fiskarbondemuseum was a series of nineteenth-century buildings, and having a staff member in every room would be ridiculous. Agnetha minded the entrance, and could watch on cameras what was going on. If she saw something happening, more often than not a child trying to touch something that was off-limits, she could radio one of the other staff members to take care of it. In the six years that she’d been here, she’d used the radio exactly twice, and one of those times was when she’d had that cantaloupe that had gone off and needed someone to mind the desk. The radio unit was going to need replacing, soon: in the past few months it had gotten noisier and noisier.

Now, while she was restocking the rack with brochures, a loud burst of static made her jump. She left the brochures where they fell, and went back behind the desk to make sure everything was all right. Nothing out of the ordinary in most of the cameras. But in the attic room, where a moment ago there had been the affable, casually dressed man with knit cap, round cheeks, and sweet smile, the screen was whited out in glare. 

"Dag," she said over the radio, which had gone back to annoying background static, "camera’s on the fritz in the attic. But don’t start tinkering with it until the patron leaves."

***

Bård told the folks at the office that Vegard was out sick, and that seemed to satisfy everyone. "I've been a bit worried about him ever since he got back after the break," Jan remarked between phone calls.

Kamilla added, "He's been moving like he had a headache or something, you know?" 

"At least _one_ of you sees reason," Calle growled. Magnus looked speculative, but said nothing.

Bård expected that any day he would hear from Vegard, an update or at the very least a ping, but when a week went by with nothing, he called the landline. Helene answered. "Hey," he said wearily. "How are you?"

"Holding up all right," she said. "You?"

"Terrible. I just... terrible. I keep... I mean... can I talk to him?"

"He’s not here, Bård."

"Where is he?"

"I don’t know."

"What? How can you not know?"

"He left three days ago. He never said where he was going, but I gather from the message he left that he’s gone to... find himself."

"I don’t understand," Bård said plaintively. "Did you have a fight?"

"No, no," she said, sounding discomposed for the first time. "There was no fight. But you and I both saw, _something_ needed to change."

"Well yeah, but--"

"So he went out to change it."

"He’s a very sick man, Helene. He’s an addict. We need to tell the authorit--"

Her voice cut like steel. " _Which_ authorities, Bård? Do you want to explain to human police what exactly is wrong with him? Or do you want to tell the dálki that the Bright Court’s Perennially Most Wanted’s whereabouts are unknown?"

"I just want my brother safe," Bård moaned. 

Her voice softened. "I do too, Bård. Believe me."

"The message from him--the one you say he left--could I see it?"

"Not now," she said. Her tone was gentle, but brooked no disagreement. "I’m not ready to have you see it right now."

"I’m worried that time is of the essence, Helene. I’m worried that we could lose him. I’m _tired_ of losing him."

"I hear you," she said, her voice softening. "I remember how terrible I felt when Alpha was printing those awful stories every day, and we didn’t know if he'd be going to jail or not, and he would just drag himself home and tear up the flooring and mope. I didn’t know how much worse it could get. Now I’d give anything to have that time back. Well... not _anything_. Not what you’re asking me to give right now. Even if I thought it would help, and I don’t think it will."

"I don’t understand, Helene."

"I’m not asking you to understand, Bård. I’m asking you to trust that I love your brother as much as you do, and that I think he’s doing what he needs to do in order to be all right."

"All right, Helene. If you change your mind, or if you need me or Maria for anything, anything--"

"I know where to find you," she said, and rang off.

***

"Jesus, Maddy."

"Too harsh?" Maddy glanced over her shoulder at her brother, who had wandered up while his steak and cheese pie was in the oven.

"Well, how was he supposed to know?"

"If I have to tell him, this is how it’s going to look." She sighed, and rewrote the first paragraph entirely. "Better?"

"Is that how you really feel?"

She shrugged. "It’s... not how I don’t feel." She put her elbow on the desk, propping her head up with a fist, staring out at the rooftops of Bergen. Her voice caught. "I keep going over that afternoon in my head. Was there anything _I_ said that made him think it was okay?"

"Okay, first of all? No. Because you wouldn’t, and because there is a world of difference between what you taught him to do, and what he ended up doing. Second, if someone else tried to make you responsible for _his_ choices--" 

"I’d tell them to get bent," Maddy acknowledged with a small watery smile.

"Third, he says it was a matter of life and death," Chuck pointed out. "Do you think anything you could have told him would have made a difference? I’m not even sure that in his situation I would have done anything different."

"But you can’t say you don’t know," she pointed out, taking off her glasses to wipe her eyes. 

"You could ask him yourself in--" Chuck checked his watch. "--seventeen minutes, but I’m pretty sure he said he didn’t know to get himself out of trouble," Chuck said. "And if I thought I could get away with it, I’m not sure I’d do _that_ differently, either." He handed her a kleenex, and gave her shoulders a brotherly squeeze. "Are you okay with all this, then?"

She blew her nose noisily. "Depends on what you mean by ‘all this,’ I guess. I’m not okay with him turning around and doing something illegal with the skills I taught him. If I was into kicking people when they’re down, I would march downstairs and slap him silly. But the tech, that’s fine. I trust Kai. Send?"

Chuck looked at the e-mail one last time. "Fair," he said. "Your decision."

She looked it over one more time, and changed how she signed off. "Still fair?"

He held his hands up in mock surrender. "You can fiddle with this thing as much as you want. I can sit here forever; you're the one with the gig tonight."

She glared at him, then glared at the letter, and then pressed "send."

> _Bård,_
> 
> _I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t know this stuff, but it is a GRAVE insult to offer money to a mage who’s just refused to teach you. So, again: NO._
> 
> _I am not a teacher. I taught your brother because he was bright, he showed promise and you were both in danger, and look where that got him._
> 
> _Look, I understand that you’re worried about him. It isn’t about money for me. This is about what I feel like taking on. Pushing me about it is not okay._
> 
> _When you get this sorted out, I’ll want to hear from you._
> 
> _Best, and please stay safe,_
> 
> _Maddy._

***

No sooner had she hung up than the doorbell rang. Lady Olivia Thorne opened it and found a small man jigging up and down on her doorstep, mittened hands jammed into his pockets.

She hadn't known him when he'd first shown up here going on ten years ago, with his very tasty brother and a naïve camera crew. Since then, though, she'd seen him everywhere. "Vegard," she said, "do come in. When you said now, you weren’t kidding!"

"Thank you." He took off his boots, and tucked the mittens and his knit cap into his pockets, blowing on his fingers to warm them up. "I called from the sidewalk. I didn’t want to just show up, but I didn’t remember your number, so I got it from your sign."

She hung up her broad-brimmed hat on the hook by the door. "After the King's Mead wore off I didn't think you'd remember anything."

Vegard shrugged, awkwardly. "It's a long story. I was up here to see the 'Don't insult the witch' sign, and I thought, I'll just see if Lady Thorne is still in the neighbourhood... "

"Of course, of course." She motioned him into the parlour. "Have a seat."

"Er. Actually, I... I was wondering if you do walk-ins."

She laughed out loud at this. "But of course, you dear boy. You show up at my door with food, and think I'm the one doing _you_ a favour?" When he’d called, she’d decided to sit him down and feed him petit-fours and hot chocolate and hope she could coax him into the treatment room. This was better. "Come on in."

"Do you pay attention to the news?" he asked, trailing her to the back of the house.

"Not overly," she said. "I see Mr. Tørnquist's been up to some interesting things. Why do you ask?"

"No reason," he said.

In the treatment room, she directed him to take off his coat and hoodie, which left him in a sweater and lined jeans. On TV he had, if possible, gotten prettier over the years, but face to face like this, even with his cheeks and the tip of his nose rosy, he looked exhausted and careworn. 

Unbidden, he sat down in the low-backed chair. She opened up an alcohol wipe. He hadn’t shaved in some time, but it had crossed the line between stubble and a very light beard, so it wouldn’t irritate her. 

When she put a steadying hand on his shoulder and felt him trembling with something other than cold, she turned to face him. He looked haunted. "Vegard," she said, keeping her voice gentle and professional, "what's wrong?"

"I've had a really rough winter," he said, his voice cracking. "I remember this feeling good. I... I just want to see if something will make me feel good again."

"All right," she said. She'd get her answers soon enough. And she supposed he'd get his. She held his head in position, and bit. 

The cortisol brought back memories of the hunt. Still, she liked to think that her taste buds had matured in the intervening centuries. As she drank, she felt the tightness in his back and shoulders ease somewhat, but he was still gamey with fear and pain. Something had happened to him. 

When she'd taken her pint, she withdrew. "Good?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Vampire venom was mildly euphoric. He had gone pale, but the muscles in his face had relaxed, and a lot of the tension had left his body. He smiled, blinking slowly. "You could take more if you wanted to."

She got to her feet, and put a bandage on him, and tucked him under a blanket. "No, no, none of that. Excuse me for a moment." 

She went out into the kitchenette and fixed him a hot chocolate, still rolling the last of his blood around on her tongue. It really wasn't pleasant, but she did have a job to do. When she returned, she handed him a mug and a plate of petit-fours and a few slices of the fruitcake some well-meaning soul had given her over the holidays. Then she pulled up the rolling chair, and sat across from him. "You taste like badly managed pain. Not a flavour I'm fond of. I don't know what you're not telling me, but I feel like anything I tell you is going to be like putting a sticking plaster on a raw and bloody stump. Do _you_ know what's wrong with you?"

"I have a basic idea," he said with a weary smile.

"Then my advice is to stop it immediately."

"Thank you," he said. "I can't, though. I would if I could."

She sat there while he drank his hot chocolate, sat and watched him until he lowered the mug and slipped a hand down the neck of his sweater, rubbing his collarbone in consternation and sneaking careful glances at her. "Was that all you wanted from me?" she asked him.

He laughed softly, and went back to his hot chocolate. "I was feeling a little curious, and a little nostalgic when I saw your sign, and that's mostly all. But even a little bit of respite is... nicer than you would believe. It's not really a thing I feel like talking about, but it's all over the news."

She raised an eyebrow. "Am I going to like what I see?"

Sorrow flickered across his face, but then he smiled and raised his mug to her. "Probably not, but I'm the same guy I've always been."

Some minutes later, she said goodbye to him, with a hug and a fierce injunction to take care of himself. Then she took an antacid--his blood really disagreed with her--and Googled him, and saw that he'd bought a new house last year. She'd heard things about housing prices in Oslo, but somehow she doubted this was the source of his distress. Frowning, she checked the Wild Hunt, and pressed the heel of her hand to her mouth. It explained the pain, certainly, if not the layers upon layers of magic she tasted on him. "But," she said softly, "it's been a month. I didn’t think it lasted that long."

***

On Sunday, Bård worked up the courage to call his parents. He still didn’t know quite what he was going to say, but they did deserve to know that Vegard was missing.

His mother answered the phone. "Hi, Bård," she said warmly. 

"Hi, Mama. Listen, ah, I wanted to call because... well... Um. Vegard--"

"Oh! Did you want to talk to him? I think I can catch him still... "

"What? He’s _there_? Mama?"

There was a long pause, and then voices, faintly, in the background. Then his mother came back on. "I’m sorry, Bård, your father says you missed him by about thirty seconds."

"Oh," Bård said softly. "Is he okay?"

"He looks like you sound. You should both listen to your mother and take a vacation."

"Do you expect him back soon, or...?"

"No, no. He’s off to do some other thing, but he said he was in the area and he wanted to see us. I’d say call his phone, but he said he left it at home."

"Yeah," Bård said. "That’s why I was a little worried about him."

"Oh, I know, poor boy, he has to use a tablet. Like a Neanderthal."

"Barbaric," Bård agreed, smiling in spite of himself. He couldn’t tell her. In the first place, he didn’t know what _to_ tell her. But at least he had some kind of a line on Vegard. "If he comes back," he said, "please tell him to call me."

***

This January was uncharacteristically warm, and this day the Fitjar campus of Norge Universitetet for Alvar was above freezing. It wasn't comfortable, but Hjerteskjell felt a trifle less self-conscious about sitting on the edge of the fountain. He could have been just taking in the fresh air. No one had to know he was crying and shaking and hyperventilating.

An uncharacteristically small lios alfr approached, carrying a messenger bag. He made a beeline for the fountain. "Hi, yeah, sorry. Gotta get in there. I have to-- Are you okay?" The elf was peering into his face, looking concerned.

"Yuh-yeah. Fine. I'll get out of your way." Hjerteskjell tucked his hands under his arms and moved a few steps away, to the bench, trying to keep it together.

The elf cast a few dubious glances his way, but then turned his attention to his task. He paced around the dry fountain. Then, with a furtive look around, he climbed inside and went up to the centre orb. He put his hands on it, and closed his eyes, and set his mouth.

There was a massive magical discharge, and for an awful moment Hjerteskjell thought that the elf was dead, frizzled by the magic that he'd just unleashed. He did flicker oddly for a few seconds. But then he shook himself a little, let out a deep breath, and joined Hjerteskjell on the bench. 

"Maintenance," he said. "It's a little tricky."

"Don't bother lying; I know what you are," Hjerteskjell said.

The elf looked stricken. "You do?"

"You're one of Jariniel's graduate assistants, neatening up the spells on things. 'Bout time, too. That thing's been running hot for as long as I've been here."

The elf grinned. "You're really smart, you know that?"

Despair made Hjerteskjell brave. "And you're not. You're lucky you didn’t die just now."

"So why are you crying?" the elf asked, and Hjerteskjell thought there might be mockery in the question, but there was only honest concern in the elf's eyes. 

"You _really_ wouldn't care."

"I don't know. I might."

"I asked for an extension, and Professor Oriel said no." Hjerteskjell looked off at the library, and at the top of the fountain, and the trees. He was losing control of his breathing again. "I'm gonna fail my paper and fail the course and flunk out of university, and I'll have to go work in the mines." He couldn't keep his face from crumpling then, and he turned away. "And I think seriously some days about just throwing myself off the footbridge."

" _No_ no no!" the elf protested, looking up with wide startled sapphire-blue eyes that didn't quite track properly. He put a hand on Hjerteskjell's arm--his hand felt stronger than it looked, and had guitar calluses on the fingertips--and Hjerteskjell wrenched away. He regretted it instantly. Here was another decent lios alfr who'd go away thinking svartalfar were rude. Way to ruin it for everyone else, Robbie. Gods, he was such filth. 

When he looked again, the elf was playing with his phone. 

"I'm sorry," Hjerteskjell said. "I... just... "

"Why do you need an extension?" the elf asked, not looking up.

"Because I'm lazy and stupid," Hjerteskjell said, savagely. He kicked at the ground, scattering clods of earth. "Because I... can't... I can't get it together. I missed the last two quizzes because I was having freakouts in the bathroom, and some mornings I can't even get up and why the hell am I telling you any of this? I'm sorry. I just... " He scrambled up and started to walk, heading for the footbridge.

"Wait, wait!" The elf caught up to him, getting in front of him. His hands hovered over Hjerteskjell’s shoulders. "I don’t want to touch you if you don’t want to be touched, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself either. Okay?"

"Why do you even care?" Hjerteskjell demanded, trying halfheartedly to dart around him.

The elf cut him off. "Because there are _rules_." He tapped the phone in his front pocket. "I thought there would be, if you’re having anxiety attacks. There’s an office you visit, and they work things out. You’ll get your extension. All right? You can pass your courses. It can be okay. I’ll walk you there."

Hjerteskjell sagged. It was only the faintest glimmer of hope, as far as he was concerned, and he never dreamed it would come from a lios alfr, but he would take what he could get. "Okay."

They walked together to the main cluster of buildings. "What are you studying?" the lios alfr asked.

"Labour History," Hjerteskjell sighed. 

"Sounds boring," the lios alfr said sympathetically. 

"I... like parts of it. So far. Why, what do you study?"

"Flight."

"Oh. Cool." His benefactor did have that physics nerd vibe. "Where are we going?"

"Uh... " The lios alfr checked his phone. "The... Mielenterveys Centre."

"It’s back there."

"Oh."

After a bit of questing, the lios alfr walked him through the great glass doors, to the marble counter where a halfling with a lot of piercings cheerfully gave him an intake form to fill out. "Do you want me to wait with you?" the lios alfr asked.

Hjerteskjell took a deep breath. "I think I’m all right now. Thanks."

"Okay. I hope you feel better." Then the lios alfr waved, and was gone--in a hurry. 

Hjerteskjell reflected that he didn’t even know the man’s name. Then again, by the end of their encounter he had begun to seriously wonder how well the strange elf knew NUA at all. He probably didn't belong here. He was probably just keeping himself out of trouble. And yet, he'd stopped to help. The thought was oddly comforting, and in the months and years to come, Hjerteskjell would, in low moments that never again quite this low, console himself with the thought of the complete stranger who had cared about him enough to risk... whatever he had risked, to make sure that he got help.

***

Karmsund Bridge, built in 1955, connects the town of Haugesund with the island of Karmøy. On the mainland side, just short of Jomfruvegen, it is not unusual for motorists on the bridge to see tourists photographing the Five Foolish Virgins, the stone circle at the base of one of the bridge's pillars. There is a parking lot nearby, and the grass is kept neatly trimmed to make access to the standing stones easier. So when, very early on the last morning in January, motorists' radios blared static at them, their cell phone calls ended in snarls of interference, and one woman's pacemaker gave her a momentary flutter, no one thought to take any note of the man in the hoodie and jeans, crouched in the middle of the stones.

***

For a thousand years the Fåberg Runestone had stood. Sometimes it had been knocked to pieces, and sometimes it had been moved—once to Oslo, although now it was safely back in the Fåberg churchyard just outside of Lillehammer—but it had stood, its runes commemorating Olve, father of Roar.

On a wintry evening at the beginning of February, several motorists noticed a backpacker walking on the footpath by the side of Gausdalsvegen. One Kukua Johansen, a pensioner, asked him where he was going, with the intention of offering the poor man a ride. "Church," he said, with a curious twist of his mouth, and it was so close that she was able to simply point.

***

The next afternoon, there was a knock at Frank Lie’s door. Frank, an unattached artist, lived in a neat little house in the village of Jevanol, across the lake from Gjøvik. In better weather, he liked to walk out to the barrow cemetery across the way and sketch, but right now he was standing with the freezer open, trying to decide between Grandiosa and fiskegrateng for tonight.

He closed the freezer and opened the front door and found himself face to face with a very fat man with a Santa Claus beard. The stranger wanted to rent Frank’s car, just for the afternoon. He had a dinner meeting at Hornsjø Høysfjell Hotel, up in the mountains, and his own car was broken down, and the rental car place said he had the same name as someone who owed them a lot of money, and while he was sure that it was going to be cleared up by the next business day his meeting was _tonight_ , and he would pay, he would pay handsomely. As collateral he handed over his own car keys and--with a nervous swallow--his wedding ring, which off his hand looked like it fit a far smaller finger. 

Frank passed over his own keys. The nearest car rental place was in Brumunddal. Had the man really walked for an hour? "I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just get an Uber," he said.

The man looked momentarily stricken. Then he shook his head. "I don’t have the app." He was surprisingly light on his feet.

The stranger was as good as his word, and returned the car by nine that night. It was in perfect condition, and he had added gas. He took back his own keys with thanks, and his ring with a sigh of relief, sliding it onto a finger it should never have been able to fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Rush's "Where's My Thing?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOj0eO3zCbc


	20. The Last Glimmer of Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to blend in with humans #6: hobbies / A traveller passes through Ulsteinvik / Startlement near Alesund / If you can make it in Molde, you can make it anywhere / The death of Gulbrandsen / Company to Seljord / Bård goes for a drive / The hound / No traces / No one stops on the way to Jøsenfjorden

With the _Tonight With Ylvis_ season ended and Brynjar restored, production meetings for _News From Nobody_ had started up again. They had all been concerned that the break would be a bad thing, and indeed, they had to drop some of the threads of ideas they just didn’t remember anymore. But in many other ways, the time off had done them good. Jessalyn had her best ideas when she was doing her carpentry, so when she returned to meetings she had pages and pages of hilarious notes, all out of date now, but recyclable. Brynjar, previously a bit dreamy and prone to nonsequiturs, had a focus that was razor-sharp. And Finn, who had been worried about his ability to perform time and time again under the pressure of a live audience, had had a lot of practice.

His Christmas gift from Bård had been knitting lessons. Something about the repetition and the warmth and softness of the wool made it very soothing. Meditative. Now, in the meeting, he sat with a super-soft Merino yarn, making booties while Jessalyn told him about the pre-interview she’d conducted two days ago.

"...and all the time I’m talking to this Morael guy, I’m thinking, You are _smarmy_. It’s like every word is a closed door and if you could open it, there would be a thousand more doors, each opening on a different grand vista of, of greed and self-importance."

"A Mandelbrot set of falseness and fallaciousness," Brynjar murmured.

"Mandelbrot... mendacity... something..." Finn twitched, moving to put down his work.

But Jessalyn said, "I’ve got this," and wrote it down, for gnawing on later. It might be nothing, but they might be able to refine it into something much better. She looked up, when she was finished, and grinned. "Finn, isn’t it the expectant _moms_ who are supposed to glow?"

He chuckled without looking up from his work. "What?"

"You’re sitting here knitting booties with a mysterious little smile on your face, the sun is behind you so you’ve got a little bit of a halo, every time you blink your eyelashes do this _thing_ against your cheek, and you’re just radiant."

"Um. Well. Thanks." Finn shrugged a little. "I remember what it’s like... a little. I used to love it. Soaking up the sun, with my limbs all heavy with fruit. _Ripening._ ...I know. I’m being weird."

"It’s okay. I just think you’re going to be the best dad."

"He are thinking," Brynjar said, "that the bar cannot be set very high for you, but _he_ wouldst not say it."

"Daddy wasn’t a bad _father_ ," Jessalyn said. "He loved us. Even when he and Mel were screaming across the dinner table at each other about the Crafter’s Strike, he loved us. And he’s trying so hard. He says this isn’t the Bright Court he grew up with. He can’t stand Alpha. He says if he’d seen his own people acting like scared rats, like they are now, he’d think maybe the lesser races _should_ take over."

Both Finn and Brynjar cracked up. "My word," Brynjar said. " _That_ are progress!"

"If you’d known Daddy back when he was torturing your original with an agony stick, you’d know that it really really is. He’s trying."

"He’s very trying," Finn agreed.

***

Ulsteinvik was a town on the southwest tip of Hareidlandet. Osnes Church stood on the outskirts, where the town's low buildings gave way to fields, now bleak and stark in the overcast February morning.

At around nine, a traveller frowsy and stiff from a night spent on the train, features muffled by a giant red scarf, walked into the churchyard. After a glance around, he bypassed the small stones and went to a much larger one which stood tall and square and aloof from the others. Despite the regular shape it was not a grave, and no graves stood within six metres of it.

Five minutes later, weaving a little, he trudged back out, to catch the 10.15 bus to Ålesund. Eleven and a half hours seemed excessive, to go twenty-three kilometres, but buses were nice and anonymous, and perhaps he could get more sleep.

***

In the middle of the next day, in a twelfth-century white marble church on the small island of Giske, not far from Alesund, Inger Godø was tidying up after her sermon and listening to NRK when a burst of static split the air. She yelped in shock and turned the radio down, and had a bit of a laugh at herself. She hoped no one had heard that.

The church was empty. The only person visible in the vicinity was a tourist in a ridiculous deerstalker cap, leaning against the tall thin standing stone at the adjacent farmhouse.

***

"They first wanted to put an airport in Molde in 1940," the fare said, plastering himself to the window. "It didn't get built until 1969, though. Oh, that one's a Dornier 328!"

He'd gotten in at the train station. The instructions were simple: take him to the Troll's Arrow, wait five minutes, and take him back. The driver, twenty-eight-year-old Bård Vik, kept giving him sidewise glances. Most people who wanted to see the Troll's Arrow didn’t wear business suits to do it. Or go in the late afternoon, when the sun was so low in the sky. 

His voice didn’t match his face, either. Bård had noted, when he was getting into the cab, that he moved and sounded like a much younger man. And his eyes had lingered on Bård’s cab license for a moment longer than most fares, and the corner of his mouth had quirked up a bit sadly.

"I've heard your voice before," Bård realized suddenly. "Are you on the radio, or something?"

"What, me?" The businessman rubbed at his jawline. His hand and his jowls didn’t quite meet up properly, in a way that hurt a little to look at, so that Bård really didn’t want to notice him at all. 

"You are! You're a singer, aren't you? Sing..." He wracked his brain. The first song that came into his head was absurd. That silly fox song, and that was not it. "Sing 'New York, New York.'"

The man in the business suit rolled his eyes a little. " _I wanna be a part of it, New York, New Y--_ "

"Oh, sorry. Sorry. Your speaking voice just... it reminded me of someone else for a second. But you’re not a singer. Obviously."

"Obviously," the man in the business suit agreed. He rubbed his neck and turned his face to the side, airport forgotten.

***

At Concorde, another Bård looked up from an invitation he was probably going to say no to, and saw Calle standing outside of his office, mashed up against the glass, rearranging his face into an array of frightful expressions. Bård laughed and shook his head, and motioned him in. "What’s up?"

Calle sobered as he sat down in front of Bård’s desk. "Gulbrandsen died."

Bård wracked his brain for a moment before breaking down and saying, "Who?" 

"The hiker."

Right. The hiker. The story had been all over the news: a search helicopter out of the Coast Guard airport had picked up a man in Utladalen who claimed to be running for his life. Ole Gulbrandsen was suffering from hypothermia and exhaustion. He had seen something incredible in the mountains, and he’d been chased until the helicopter—which had been on the verge of turning back due to mechanical failure--came swooping in. And now he was dead. "That’s terrible. Do they know what from?"

"His heart just stopped," Calle said. "Overnight. Do you know anything about it?" he pressed. 

"What? No. Just what you just told me, just now. Why?"

Calle put his chin in his hand, and seemed to be weighing whether he ought to say anything or not. "Because you two are up to _something_ , and my best guess is that it involves magic, and I’m just going to keep following the weirdness and guessing until you tell me."

"I know nothing about Olaf Gulbrandsen," Bård sighed.

"Ole Gulbrandsen," Calle corrected. 

"Him either."

"Okay. Can you tell me what _is_ going on, then?"

"Calle, if I knew about something magical going on, do you really think I’d be here twiddling my thumbs?"

"I think anything that would keep you from vacationing with your family has to be some kind of violation of the laws of physics."

"True," Bård muttered. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to say anything else, Calle gave him an affectionate thump on the shoulder, and left.

***

Nastaran wasn’t sure what made her pick up the hitchhiker on the E134, just outside of Notodden. He was handsome, to be sure, but there were a lot of very handsome men in the world, and it was an odd time of day to be out. But this one had a beautiful smile, and his eyes, behind his glasses, were kind, with a light in them that even his evident weariness couldn’t dampen. "How far are you going?" she asked him.

"Seljord," he said. 

"We can do that," Nastaran replied cheerfully. "And what’s taking you there?"

"You, I hope," he said with a twinkle, and she laughed. "Um. Just playing tourist."

"In Seljord?" She thought about it. "Well, there’s the Sea Serpent Tower. And a twelfth-century Romanesque church. And, I don’t know, if you might look at Fesjåplassen. Often there are things on. Nothing today that I’m aware of, but if you’re interested in history or archaeology or anything like that, there are a couple of ancient barrows there." Movement made her glance at her passenger: he’d sat up straighter at that. "And then Kristofferhaugen at the east end of town, but that one’s not so well kept. I have a cousin in Sussex who does history, and when I told her that Marjan and I were moving here, first she said Oh, why do you want to go all the way out _there_? But it’s my job, you see, I design irrigation systems. And the next week, she called up all excited, because she’d googled the place, and suddenly she can’t wait to visit. What do you do?"

The question seemed to have taken him by surprise. "Um..."

She burst out laughing. "Oh, I’m sorry. I should have warned you. Marjan says I turn on a dime."

"Marjan...?"

She gave him a little smile that was equal parts pride and tenderness and defiance. "My wife."

"Oh," he said. He leaned back against the headrest. "My wife is back in the city. I miss her so much." In the mirror, he met her eyes, and he returned her smile, but he looked so, so tired. "Will there be anywhere in town where I can rent a bike?"

"I don’t know of anywhere," she said thoughtfully. "But you know, there’s a man just outside of town who handles scrap, and every time I pass he’s got a mountain of bicycles. I can let you off there. I’d wait for you, but I have to get to work."

"That will be perfect," he said. "Thank you so much."

***

He was caught in a spider web, unable to struggle or even scream properly. The web shivered with the approach of its keeper, but as the monstrous thing came into view, Bård, writhing, saw that it was not a spider, but a huge octopus, the suckers on its tentacles tipped with needle-sharp inward-pointing teeth. As they reached for him, he felt movement. Vegard was at the thing’s shoulder, wearing his black tank top and hacking away at the tentacle with a Paul Reed Smith. He said nothing, didn’t even look at Bård, but Bård knew somehow that this was a DGT with a whale blue flamed maple top, and Vegard was attacking the octopus with it because there was no use trying to play it anymore. Vegard’s hair was wet, and at first Bård thought it was just sweat, but then Vegard turned and Bård saw that one of the tentacles was buried in Vegard’s skull. "Vegard?" he said in a small voice.

Vegard turned, barely sparing a glance at him. "Shut up." 

Bård jerked awake with a gasp. The clock read 04.11. Maria was fast asleep beside him. He petted her hair--she smiled in her sleep--and then climbed out of bed, careful not to disturb her. 

He hadn’t heard anything about Vegard in weeks. He had a last resort he’d been saving, saving because if this failed he’d have nothing at all, and up until now that sliver of hope had seemed more important. He fumbled in the dark for a pair of jeans and a sweater. After a stop in the bathroom, he slipped outside and into his Corolla. If he was wrong, he didn’t want to disturb people, or embarrass himself. 

He drove south for half an hour, off the highway, along side roads, until the neat houses and camps gave way to empty coastline. On a particularly empty stretch, he pulled in at a turnaround, crossed the road, and picked his way down to the water. He stood on a small sand beach studded with rocks, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Brynjar Kvaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!" 

"You needs not shout," said a reproachful voice behind him.

He turned, and saw Brynjar standing there, quite restored, in his grey duster, leaning on a new walking stick. "You’re fast. And looking very well."

"The latterer are thanks to Finn. I sawed your dream and felt your need. You _could_ had just turned on your phone."

Bård took a step towards him. "If you could see that, and you could see where I was going, you can see _him_."

Brynjar nodded. "I can."

"Where?"

"In no immediate danger."

Well, that was a relief, anyway. " _Where?_ "

Brynjar’s eyes did a quick sweep of the area. "More than that I cannot telling, Bård."

"Why?"

"Right now he do not want to be found."

“Brynjar, what he wants isn’t... He’s not possession of all his faculties.”

“He are not,” Brynjar agreed. “But I will not take from him what he have left.”

"If he _was_ in danger, would you tell me?"

"Fore and firstmost I would speed to his aid," Brynjar said, "but I has made promises and taken confidences."

"And these are somehow more important than... than...?"

"Your brother alloweth me to do very little for him, Bård, but this I can do, and I will do it well."

Bård walked a little away from him, and wheeled abruptly. "If you don't tell me where he is," he said, "we’re done."

"I understands, Bård."

Bård's shoulders sagged. It had been meant as a bluff. "That's it, then? You'd rather never see me or speak to me again than just help me find my brother? My big brother, who you've got to see I'm really worried about?"

"It maketh me sad, Bård. But nothing I can say to you will changing how you feel, and nothing you can say to me will changing how I feel. And that is as it should be, and we will both has to deal with the consequences."

"All right," Bård said, spreading his hands. He was going to have to have a little freakout when he got back to the car, but for now he worked to keep his expression stoic. "Goodbye, Brynjar. Um. For the things that you _have_ done for us--thank you."

"Thou art welcome, Cousin Bård. I sees not the future, but I sees a time when your resolvification may change. Know that you can call."

Bård gave him a tight-lipped smile, and lifted a hand in farewell. 

He awoke with a start, with the sky turning pale in the east. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and pinched his side, hard, to make sure that he was finally awake for real this time.

As he showered, he mulled it over. He'd been thinking of calling Brynjar Kvam. The dream must have been his subconscious telling him not to waste his time, but it was good to still have that little sliver of hope in reserve. 

He got dressed, hugged his kids, and shoved a couple of fried eggs in his mouth, washing them down with orange juice.

When he went to kiss Maria goodbye, she embraced him. "You look so tired," she said.

Bård gave her a smile. "I actually slept really well last night. _Weird_ dreams."

"Dreams are your mind’s way of dealing with stress," Maria said. "You have been under a lot lately."

"True," he sighed. He lingered a little longer in her embrace than he did most mornings, and then he put his shoes and coat on and faced the day.

When the door closed, Maria looked down and frowned in puzzlement. Where Bård’s shoes had been sitting, there was, not the usual halo of gravel and road salt, but a fine dusting of beach sand.

***

"Back again?" Agnetha said to the tall blond man with the ponytail.

He grinned, showing perfect white teeth. "Oh, well, you know how it is."

"Making sure no one’s run off with the artifacts?"

He raised his eyebrows. His tone was light, but the temperature of the reception room at the Gulen Fiskarbondemuseum seemed to drop a couple of degrees. "Where do you get that idea, I wonder?"

"Oh! Apologies. You just have a police officer look about you. I just assumed... Sorry."

"I’m flattered," he said with a grin. "Four years on a, ah, local force. I didn’t think it was that obvious."

"It’s your shoulders," she said. "Something about your shoulders. And the fact that you come by every three months like clockwork."

"Do I?"

"You do sure like that attic, don’t you?"

"It’s interesting," he said with a shrug, and moved his hand oddly. Then, with a smile he said, "I’ll let you get back to your tea, then."

She smiled again at his retreating back, and sipped her tea. It tasted oddly bitter. Something was wrong...

***

Fanael Euriel saw as soon as he reached the attic that the anchor had been tampered with, but he exercised a moment of restraint. How had the human cow known about the attic? He scanned the room, found the camera, and turned away before blowing it up.

No marks on the anchor. No residual channelling spells. No shields. He made everything inside himself go still, and interrogated the room, but any traces left were so old and so faint that they were drowned out by the layers upon layers of history.

"Sir?" 

Euriel turned his attention to the young human who’d just poked his head in the door. "Yes?"

The human was as white as a cheese. "I’m sorry to cut your visit short, but we have to close immediately."

"Hm. All right. Is something wrong?"

"We’ve had a medical emergency in the office."

"Oh goodness," Euriel said, trying to put on a suitably distressed expression. "I hope everything will be all right."

"It doesn’t look good," the human said quietly as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

It had been a silly thing to do. Silly and vindictive and born of panic. He needed the woman to tell him who had been in that room, who had died to release the magic. Now she was dead, and questioning anyone else would look grossly inappropriate.

***

That evening, while Euriel reported the loss and requested backup and more resources, and was directed to rendezvous with Ren Kimberael at Knutsvikfestning, a man staggered into Røldal Overnatting. He was wild-haired and unshaven. His backpack, and his jeans from the knee down, were covered in mud and road salt. "I’d like a room, please," he said raggedly. "Just for tonight."

"This is an apartment hotel," the desk clerk said doubtfully. "We usually don’t do things for a single night."

"Please," he said. "I was biking. But I can’t get all the way to Jøsenfjorden tonight."

"Goodness!" she said. And then she took another look at his eyes, his face, his lightly bearded chin. His teeth were chattering. "Are you...?"

He waved his gloved hands in consternation. "I’m no one, I’m no one," he said. 

"You’re no one," she agreed, humouring him. He held out a wad of kroner, and she took it from him and handed him a key. 

"Thank you," he breathed. "Thank you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Daemonium Nymphae's "Dance of the Satyrs" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSXOSD9YMM


	21. The Machinations of Jacob Aetherium

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doom in Jelsa / The tip of the iceberg / The pleasure den / A defender in Florø / How the land lies / A winter picnic in Måløy / A cry for help in Koppang

The thing about small communities--they always notice a stranger. Jelsa was no exception. It took only a couple of polite inquiries for Euriel to find the man they looking for, tromping through a farmer’s field suspiciously close to the standing stone called Økstrakastespyd.

And this stranger was particularly noticeable. He had longish wavy dark hair, muttonchop sideburns and a stubby attempt at a sparrow beard, corpse paint, white contact lenses, and wore a spiked leather jacket. He spoke English with something like a northern English accent. "Whaddyer mean by this, hey? I don't have to put up with this. Do you know who I am?"

"We don't care who you are, Mr.--"

The man looked incensed. "Aetherium. Jacob Aetherium." When the two elves failed to kneel before him, he prompted, "Bass player? Cryptodemonium? I thought you Norwegians were supposed to know your metal."

Something made Euriel look up. "All right, Mr. Aetherium. Where are you _really_ from?"

"Blackburn, born and bred."

Euriel cleared his throat delicately, and examined his knuckles. "Mr. Aetherium."

The man sagged, and his accent changed drastically. "Green Bay, Wisconsin."

"Better. Now, would you like to tell us what you're doing on Boknafjorden?"

The man shrugged. "Scouting for an album cover, man. Looking for Viking stuff.” His pale eyes lit up. “Did you know King Olav Tryggvason juggled knives? And there were, like, three classes of people in Viking society: karls, jarls, and thralls. They--"

"We don’t care," Euriel said. "Are you a mage, Mr. Aetherium?"

"What, like in World of Warcraft? I had a paladin, but I haven’t played since I started the tour."

Euriel rapidly tired of these nonsensical answers. If this was someone the humans would miss, he was overestimating humans terribly. He sent a bolt of raw magic at this Jacob Aetherium. If the man had the slightest spark of magery about him, it would burn his mind. Euriel reflected wryly that it just might make him smarter.

The man toppled. Well, that had been easy. Euriel smiled at his compatriot. "Should we do something with the body?" Kimberael asked.

"He might still be alive," Euriel said with a wave of his hand. "He couldn’t have survived what he was about to do anyway, so if anything, we’ve just saved his life. We'll let the humans know that our business here is concluded, and mention that we saw Mr. Green Bay Doom wandering around the forest, clearly chemically inconvenienced. Either way, though, he's not going to pose any danger to us."

***

An hour later, when the forest had been quiet for a long time and the sun was sinking below the horizon, the man who had called himself Jacob Aetherium rolled over and sat up. He was chilled to the bone, but he'd taken care to fall in such a way that he'd protected his face from the cold.

He rose to his feet stiffly and stumbled through the pine trees. His face was blank, slack, his eyes vacant, and if the elves had returned they would have concluded that his mind had in fact been burned. 

His meanderings took him to a standing stone, shielded from the sea by pines. The markings on the stone had been traced back to the seventh century. The snow around it was untrampled. 

All at once, life and light came back into the man's face--an achievement, for someone in corpse paint. He glanced around. From one pocket he withdrew a little pad of paper--the black leather cover said, "Dark Thoughts"--and from another he withdrew a small jar. 

Euriel and Kimberael were long gone. If they had gone east, everything would have been different. At Jøsenfjorden they would have circled Ullahaugen Barrow in consternation, and perhaps heard about the cyclist who had come through very late the night before last, and would have searched fruitlessly for his remains. At Bykle, they would have found the rack of antlers, grey with age, that adorned the front of the cabin at Huldreheimen Setesdal Museum, dead and cold. They would have seen the tracks, the half-hearted attempt to cover them, and traced them back to a depression in the dirty snow where someone had clearly tried to step over the low wire fence and tripped. At Lårdal, they would have stood in the village churchyard shaking their heads, and looked for a body, and not found one. Seljord, Notodden. Kongsberg, Drammen... all cleared, the bodies of the mages gone, no doubt spirited away by accomplices.

But they hadn’t gone east; they’d gone north, back where they’d come from, and checked on Askvoll, which would still be operational—for another few hours, as it turned out, although neither of them were to know for nearly a month, and by the time they found out it was much too late.

***

Bård checked the address a third time. 285. But 283 was here, and then there was the bridge, and the numbers started on the other side at 287.

He’d spent last night wandering around a part of Ekeberg that got much seedier when he left his contacts in. Ignoring the persistent feeling of being watched, he’d scrutinized every face. Vegard _had_ been in Bergen, but he’d been just leaving, and that was weeks ago now, and maybe there was something to what the private eye had said. Bård had to check; he had to do _something_. 

Eventually the cold had gotten to him, and he’d wandered into a little café to warm up. While he’d sipped a watery hot chocolate, a swaying, twitching, painfully thin lios alfr had come in. She’d ordered a cup of tea, counting out kroner with trembling hands. On impulse, Bård had come up next to her--she had flinched away from him--and handed the man behind the counter a hundred kroner. "Soup and a sandwich and a school bun for her too, please," he’d said. To her, he’d added, "There’s another hundred in it for you if you can give me some information."

She’d devoured the food, and given him this address. It had made her sad, and she’d cautioned him three times against actually using it, but she seemed somewhat mollified when he told her he was looking for his brother. She’d told him to be careful.

He really didn’t want her to have been lying to him. He whistled the first six notes of "I Can See Clearly Now," to get his contact lenses to show him what was hidden. But everything stayed as it had been. No extra buildings appeared. 

He stalked under the bridge, meaning to check the other side, just in case.

There was now a door set into the cement wall.

The knob turned easily. It opened inward. The corridor was very dim, and a dark shape rushed up to meet him. A hand, rough-skinned and knobby, cupped his ear, fondled the top. "Human," a voice said. Bård guessed female. He couldn’t see much of her at all, but she was taller and broader than him, and had been eating garlic. "This isn’t a place for you."

"I’m looking for my brother," Bård said. "I think... I have reason to believe..."

She sighed, and turned on her heel. "Look, then. He human too?"

Bård trotted along behind her. "Yeah." 

"Then it’s not a place for him, either. If you see him, take him home."

She opened the door, and Bård was assailed by the scent of chemicals and ozone and sweat and sick bodies. The space was dimly lit by witchlights, under which many kinds of creatures sat and lay and twitched and writhed and shuddered. Bård clapped a hand over the lower half of his face and tried to make it look like he was thinking, instead of trying not to throw up. 

"There are three rooms," the troll behind him said. "Accept no gifts. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, sample nothing. Be considerate. You have ten minutes."

Bård shuffled from room to room. In each one there were little papered-over booths with shuttered windows, and light peeking through the cracks. He supposed that was where one bought the drugs, and the booths probably spared the vendors the stench. In a corner, a gaggle of well dressed lios alfar were passing around a pipe filled with what looked like black diamonds. Elsewhere, a pixie and a toad were taking turns licking each other, while next to them a young shirtless ghoul who was injecting something kept the occasional passer-by from stumbling onto them. A young man with antlers was painting his toes with something shimmering that seemed to be making his feet dissolve, a beatific expression on his face. An emaciated unicorn lay along one wall, eating from a pile of fruits that looked like fire. Every time it threw back its head and swallowed, it would stamp a forefoot on the floor, its unshod hoof making a noise like bells. 

Bård examined every face. Once he saw dark curls, and made for them, but the man who had them had the eyes and legs of a goat, and two curly little horns, and was lazily painting shimmering glyphs on his own skin. He glared at Bård, who excused himself. 

He’d spent tense hours researching this stuff. What if the orb had been an unusual delivery method for something like glitter, or fang? If Vegard was far gone enough, would Bård even recognize him?

"Brynjar!" a voice nearby said. Bård whirled. A young man was propped up against the wall. He had horns too, the filed-down stubs of antlers, and the velvety ears of a deer. His ribs showed, and his doe eyes were enormous. "Oh. Sorry. Thought you were... someone I knew." He sat up a little. "You’re not him, are you? You look like him. Brynjar’s..." He screwed up his face. "...changeling? Was that how it went?"

"He told you?" Bård demanded, aghast.

"He didn’t tell me nothing. Beyla called me up for coffee, trying to get me back in the group. They were a good group. Sometimes. But it hurts so much, y’know? You can’t imagine the pain. Nothing legal even touches it. She said they put it together from stuff he’d said, and when he left Rán went to the press." He shook his head blearily. "I dunno ‘bout you, but I don’t think that’s okay. To go to the press. She didn’t either. Beyla I mean. It’s _confidential _. You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous no matter what you are."__

__"I’m looking for my brother," Bård told him. "Your group ruined his life."_ _

__The deer-man leaned his head back against the wall. "He’s not here. You’re the only human here. Only one in a long time. I can’t feel much, but I can feel that." He glanced back at Bård, and shrugged. "’Course we ruined his life. You’re mortals. What do you expect gods to do?"_ _

____

***

The mound of white stones, with its twisted wire sculpture on top, marked the place where the Germans had landed at Florø on April 9, 1940. Strandgata was one of the main streets, but it was relatively quiet when a figure in a dark hoodie crossed into the park, and unwrapped something.

"Got you!" His arms were seized, and Euriel and Kimberael stepped out of glamour. "We know what you’re doing, mage."

The fear left the man’s face all at once, and he drew himself up. "Now, just hang on a sec."

"We know you’re undoing important spells around the country." Euriel tried to flip the man’s hood up; the man yanked it down, glaring. "We know this is just a disguise."

"Magic? _Seriously_?" He wrenched his wrist free of them. Euriel grabbed him again in a flash, and redoubled his efforts to take down the saboteur’s hood. "Stop touching me, you freak!"

"What is the meaning of this?" another voice demanded. A white woman in a lavender travelling dress, frizzy white curls poking out from under a cloche, advanced on the elves, brandishing her handbag. "Are you harassing this poor lad?"

"He’s not what he seems to be, Ma’am. We’re looking for a dangerous saboteur."

"I see, and you’re undressing everyone on the street, in February? Shall _I_?" She started to lift her skirt.

"Gods no!" Kimberael cried.

"Look, ma'am, if you'll just stay back--" Euriel put a hand on her arm.

"Unhand me!" she cried, and struck him with her handbag. Judging by the weight of it, she was carrying a bouquet of hammers. "Leave us alone, or first I shall scream, and then I shall put in an immediate call to your superiors."

"You don’t know what you’re doing," Euriel protested. "You’re protecting a dangerous criminal."

"He called me," said the man in the hoodie, "a magician."

"Sir!" the white woman said, in high dudgeon. "What _are_ you playing at?"

Euriel sighed. "Come on, then." There was no use pushing this, not with Florø’s good and great staring down her nose at them. His eyes shifted to the man in the hoodie. "We’ll be watching you." He beckoned to Kimberael, and they moved off. 

"You should lodge a complaint," the white woman said. "They were awful to you."

"I’ll e-mail," the man in the hoodie sighed. "Right now I just want to get my grocery shopping done in peace. Annnnnd, seeing as unwrapping a sandwich in a public park is apparently a crime, I’ll be shopping hungry."

The white woman in the lavender suit and cloche insisted on walking him to the Spar Market. On her way out, she saw Euriel lurking at the door, and glared, adjusting her lavender lapels with a little sniff.

Then she stalked back out to the sculpture, took off a single white glove, and opened a compact. She peeled a piece of paper off the mirror and stuck it lightly to one of the white rocks in the pile, and dabbed onto it a bit of something that was not makeup. By the time Euriel and Kimberael reached the park, she was gone, although later the manager of Mama Rosa Pizza and Kebabs would find, in the garbage can in the women’s washroom, a lavender travelling suit with the thrift store tag still in the sleeve, hose, high heels, a cloche hat, a handbag with some makeup in it, and fake breasts.

***

"What I'm getting from this," said Lakrima Juniel, at a hastily called board meeting, "is that someone’s found a safer way to break the spells."

"No," Aun Harael sighed. " _No._ They’ve found thirty-two people they consider expendable. And someone to clear the bodies away."

"We got cocky," Ziniel Bairdriel grumbled. "All that’s protecting them is the deadliness of releasing them. Those spells take a month to weave and fix. We should have had thirty-six, and we should have set up a system to monitor them."

Lavinia thumped the table with a fist. "As Harael has said many, _many_ times, there is no reason to do thirty-six, and extra anchors make the structure _less_ stable. Thirty-two, and they don’t need monitoring. They’re their own defence." 

"You know what I think," ventured Juniel. 

"We talked about this, Lakrima," Ardriel said wearily. "The web has picked up nothing. The older Ylvisåker has been neutralized. The doctor they engaged to snoop around has been neutralized. And even if I felt like believing the Bright Court has been wrong all this time and it was the younger one all along, _he_ is going about his ordinary business, and scouring the city for his brother, who is almost certainly dead."

"Your buddy Vinael thought they were neutralized eight years ago, too. Ask him how that worked out."

"He was not my _buddy_! He was a fanatic. I’m a pragmatist. They sold well, but it’s silly to treat them like the _real_ problem when the fae world is seething with homegrown criminal activity."

"All the wrongdoing in the world cannot be traced to a couple of human revyboys," Lavinia put in scornfully.

"And their changelings," Juniel said. "Has anyone been looking in on their changelings?"

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" Ardriel demanded. "Thanks to Aurindael, we’ve got eyes everywhere. Melantha Aruviel’s little boy toy has been behaving himself."

"And the other one? The _god_ who slipped his traces and can’t be tracked?"

"Knows that his brother _can_ , and that we bite back. He’s been very quiescent, gentlemen. He’s the one with the magic eye; I’m willing to bet that he understands very well how the land lies. Everybody’s so hung up on those bloody humans... meanwhile, we’ve got a league of kamikaze mages to deal with, and I haven’t heard any ideas yet."

"I think we should audit all of the anchor points immediately," said Juniel, "and then post guards on _all_ of the ones that remain. I think we should have done that since the first moment we became aware of the attacks." This last was aimed at Harael, who had shot down two of her proposals the previous week. 

"It's a lot of resources," Ardriel said thoughtfully. "Pretty drastic."

"Having to redo a bunch of spells is a bit drastic," she shot back. "The new spells don’t start coming online until March 11. And that's nothing compared to how drastic losing the whole thing would be."

She'd pushed it too far. Around the table, there were aggrieved sighs. "We're not going to lose the whole thing," Ardriel said, and his tone was an auditory pat on the head. "There's no way they can possibly get to them all."

Harael shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "To take it right down, saboteurs would have to get to them all, but unfortunately, losing even a few of them affects the stability of the spell. We _are_ already seeing signs of leakage."

"It’s your substandard equipment," Bairdriel shot back. 

Ardriel held up a hand to forestall the fight he knew was coming. "I'll tell Euriel and Kimberael to keep tabs on things, and send Yolinael and Lynnedslag around to check the others."

"Four people? They'll take weeks! The sites need to be guarded!"

Lavinia shook her head decisively. "Then we’re playing right into their hands. Whoever’s doing this can’t hope to break them all, but they don’t have to. All they have to do is make us panic and put all kinds of security everywhere, and draw attention to ourselves, so that they can twist what we’re doing and make us out to be the bad guys."

"You got your way in Eina, Lakrima," Harael added. "Even though the web let us intercept and eliminate the saboteur before he got within ten metres of the site. We now have armed, glamoured guards who haven’t heard a peep since. We pay two kids to stand there doing nothing, and with every day that goes by, the chances of them slipping up and drawing the wrong kind of attention increases."

Ardriel brought a firm hand down on the table. "We are not going to panic and send personnel haring off in all directions, we are not going to call attention to ourselves with a flurry of activity, and we are not going to waste resources. We are already in the process of reweaving the _two_ spells they managed to break--"

"That you know of," Bairdriel put in.

"We will check everything," Ardriel assured them. "If it’s more than a couple of cowards martyring themselves for the Dissolution, I’m confident that we can approach the Nimarael government for support. But if this is terrorism, we’re not going to bow to it. Everyone keeps accusing us of fearmongering. I will not have my own people prove them right."

***

He had been healed and whole and free from parasites and potential eavesdroppers for months now, but between the strange artefacts that persisted in the vision of the grey eye, and the new web of listeners across the land, and the quiet knowledge that he sat heavier on the fabric of the universe than most and his actions resonated more deeply, Brynjar Kvam would not let himself think the name of the man he went to visit, the man whose distress sang at him with an electric hum.

In the middle of the night he took him out of the municipal hostel in Måløy, where he'd been lying awake amidst the truly homeless men, tense and breathing hard until the tap at the window had sent him leaping out of bed to pull on his boots. Brynjar speeded him to a little cove called Fremstevika.

When Sleipnir knelt, Brynjar dismounted and the other tumbled off her back into the wet snow. Making strangled noises of disgust deep in his throat, he tore off his filthy clothes with hands that shook. On his knees in the snow, he scrubbed at his skin, his roars and moans occasionally rising in pitch to screams, while Brynjar got a fire going. He scrubbed and flailed and sobbed and hugged himself and pounded the ground until ice crystals cut his fists to bloody ribbons.

When he was calmer, balled up on the ground with his shoulders heaving, Brynjar presented him with a bowl of warm water, a bottle of three-in-one wash, and a washcloth. Still sobbing, he wet his hair and worked the soap through, and poured the water over his head. Then he soaped up his body, and was about to rinse with more snow, but by that time a fresh bowl of warm water was ready. 

Rinsed, naked and shivering in earnest, he wavered and collapsed into the towels that Brynjar held out for him. Brynjar bundled him up and patted him dry, and then wrapped him in a hooded robe and two blankets and dried his icy feet and shoved them into foot duvets, and salved and bandaged his knuckles, and sat him down on a mat between the fire and Sleipnir's warm flank. It was like dressing a chilly doll.

"I was dirty," he explained in a monotone, staring into the fire.

"I knows."

"It's not _fair_."

"This is the path you has chosen. Thou art free to choose another."

"I know." He stared into the fire for a little while longer. Then he said, "Have you got anything to eat?"

Brynjar flashed a grin and unpacked dinner, still steaming, from the spelled warming chest on Sleipnir's back: kig ha farz with winter vegetables and great chunks of pork. As Brynjar broke up the great buckwheat dumpling in its still-steaming canvas bag and shook some into their soup, he was not surprised to see his companion burst into tears.

Still, this was a practical man, and he curled his small body around the warmth of the ceramic crock Brynjar served him, and ate. Soon his chest had stopped hitching and his eyes were dry, and he was making small, happy noises. He exclaimed aloud when Brynjar brought out the round loaf of bread, still warm from the hearth at Valaskjolf, and a small pot of butter, and there were more tears. Fresh chocolate-almond croissants finished the meal, and him. He slept, exhausted, curled up against Sleipnir's warm flank. Brynjar basked in the silence.

"Bettered?" he said finally.

"Much better. You're an angel!"

Brynjar snorted. "Different franchise, cousin."

"If you hadn't shown up I was probably going to cause a scene, so thank you. How are... things?"

" _She_ miss you terribly. They all do. She telled the younglings that you are inspecting bridges, so now of courses they must examinate every bridge they pass."

"'Inspecting bridges.' Huh. I like that. I guess it's true. From underneath lately, more often than not. How are they doing?"

"Well. Concerned and missing their father keenly, but well."

"And--" He looked around nervously. "-- _him?_ "

"The habitual watchers lose interest, but he are sick at heart. Not resting. Trying to work."

"But it's February. There's not even anything for him to do. He should be on a beach in Mallorca or something."

"Just as well for you that he are not."

"Well...not _now_. But can't you tell him to at least rest?"

"Resting holdeth no joy for him. He fears that his future are over. He fears for you. Besides, he are not listening to me. He have told me off."

"What? Why?"

"I wouldst not tell him where to finding you. It were a bluff, but he keeps to it."

"I'm sorry."

"Be not sorry."

"No! I... you've been so good to me, and I never even thought about what this would do to you."

Brynjar handed him a mug of the spiced drinking chocolate he'd been brewing over the fire. "Your choices are maked, and they are your choices. As his choices are his, and mine are--make no mistake--wholly mine."

"Wholly or holy?"

Brynjar smiled. "That too are your choice. My aid are given freely and with gratitude, and believing me I knows the difference."

"If I need him... ?"

"He were ready to go through me to get to you. That changeth not. I have to but tell him where to find you."

"And what about... the lovebirds?"

"Safe still. Surveilled, but safe. Should my brother incur anyone's displeasure, they incurs mine."

"No idea who _they_ are?"

"I develops suspicions, inklings, hints, theories, conjectures, but I fear to looking deeper, for they has ways of feeling eyes on them, and of hearing their names on lips. I can waiting. So long as they touch not my loved ones, I are patient."

"Thank you for keeping everyone safe."

Brynjar lowered his head in acknowledgement. "It are a joint effort. And thou?"

A sad, bitter laugh. "You saw. You probably smelled, too. I have nothing left. I’m out of cash, and I don’t dare get more. They nearly got me on my way out of Florø. They were waiting for me at the bus stop, and I guess they saw me hesitate because then they were on either side of me demanding to know what I’d done with the old woman’s body. I said, ‘It’s in here!’ and threw my bag at them and ran, and I had to use a lot of what I had on me just to get away. I'm down to three. I can't believe I... I never should have let any of this happen. I never should have let them take... everything. I thought it was just going to be the magic, but I lost everything else too. I hate this. I miss my job. I miss my family. I miss my brother. I miss my _voice_. I miss myself, B--." He clamped his mouth shut and clapped a bandaged hand over it, eyes darting to and fro.

"How longerer goes this?" Brynjar asked gently.

"I don't know. I lost track. Of everything."

"Perhaps it are time to ask for help."

"No! Not yet. God, not now. I don’t want him to see me like this."

"I were not thinking of your brother. Perhaps a professional?"

"You think I should... ?"

"You are getting to the end of thy rope. There are no shame in asking for help." Brynjar remembered another part of his errand, and fetched a bundle from Sleipnir's back. "Come, there are also this."

The other picked through the bundle, discreetly slipped on clean boxer briefs under the robe, and then added jogging pants and jeans. He took the foot duvets off long enough to put on a pair of thick wool socks, and then put them back on. Then a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt that he pressed to his face, inhaling deeply, before he put it on. Then a ratty sweater. He drew out a coat Brynjar had gotten from the army surplus store, contemplated it for a minute, and put it next to him, preferring the robe and blankets for the moment.

He picked through the remaining clothes, putting some in the army surplus backpack Brynjar had bought, and leaving others aside. "People will recognize this. I did an interview in this shirt. And this one is one of my favourites."

"I think that were the point."

"No."

The boots he'd taken off and flung were dirty and had had feet in them almost continuously for four days, but they were good boots, and Brynjar collected them now and replaced them with another good solid pair, first blacking them with charcoal from the fire and lining them with plastic bags and tying the laces in such a way as to suggest that the laces were the only thing holding them together. He took the old socks, too--wool, intact, but stiff with filth. "You're sure there are no other way than this?"

"It's been slow going, but maybe I can make it work. It doesn't use up what I've got left. No one looks at me. They make doubly sure to look away. That’s how I managed here." He laughed wickedly. "They were guarding it and they were right to be suspicious, but I waited until one of the goons was out getting food, and then I lurched up to where the other one stood, and I unzipped my pants, and you bet he moved away. By the time he realized I wasn’t peeing, it was too late, and the flash knocked him out."

"Very, very lucky. That were a big risk, a foolish risk; take no more like it. You should asking for help. Something must change."

"Yeah." A sigh. "Yeah." His shoulders sagged. "I’m so tired of this."

"A word, and I will returnify you to Oslo. Come back to family. Let me work on you. Make peace with your brother and mine, and gift them the giving of the truth. Take up what thou canst salvage of thy career." He waved a hand in the direction of a certain blue ball. "Give that up."

A slow, sad shake of the head. "Not now. I'm too far. I can't just... "

"Your choosing."

"I know. That's what keeps me sane. Relatively."

"And whither goest thou now?" 

The other did not speak, but held the answer in his mind. _Koppang._

"We can does that. Sleep now. I will wakify you when we must go."

The other gave Brynjar a grateful smile, and snuggled up against Sleipnir's belly, and was snoring in seconds.

***

Several hours later, in pale morning, light, the man with one grey eye--Vegard was resolutely not thinking his name--gave him a quick hug and let him off in the snow-covered lane behind a sandwich shop. Vegard watched the horse scuttle over the top of a building and disappear. Then he shouldered his pack and started to walk.

He shook his head at himself, scrubbing away tears. This time just about a year ago--not quite--if you had told him that his strongest connection to hearth and home would be this man (this "mannish thing," he had once called himself), Vegard would have laughed in your face.

He found a flower shop with a sunken entrance, a nice sheltered spot where the ground was relatively dry, and hunkered down on one of the steps. He drew a luminous blue ball out of his pocket. 

Bård had been right. He'd given up everything for this, hadn't he? "I need help!" he cried angrily as it lit up. Then the blue glow bathed his face. "I need help," he said in a much softer voice, and then he shifted on the stairs so that he could sit comfortably for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Geddy Lee's "Still" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU3oPCYN3ZA


	22. Unravelling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From under their noses, in Kvikne / Terror in Eina / Ideas for a sketch / Not like Vegard / How to blend in with humans #7: a healthy breakfast / Pamplemousse / Bård turns on

On weekdays, the stave church in Kvikne was open to the public. Old people wandered in to say prayers. Tourists snapped photos. A couple of teens, a young woman in vaguely Bohemian dress, and a grey-bearded tramp in a shapeless pea coat and frayed gloves looked like they just didn't have anywhere else to go. 

Two men in oddly cut suits strode in. They were not acknowledged. In addition to the magic that made the tips of their ears invisible, there was just a thread of repulsion surrounding them, making them fiercely uninteresting. They went to the altar, picked up a candlestick, and looked at each other. "Gone," one said.

"And another month for weaving." The pain of the mageburn he’d gotten in Måløy made Euriel crankier than usual, and he swore hard enough to put a crack in the baptismal font. "I’m beginning to get nervous. This is a big hole we’re looking at. No wonder they’re having problems."

Kimberael put a monocle to his eye, and kept doing things to the side of it. "Same as the others. No magical signature. No signs of magical translation. Not even fingerprints. You’d think they’d build in some redundancy into this wonderful setup of theirs."

"There’s a natural margin, but Lynnedslag says we’re getting really close to the end of it. Sunndalsøra and Åndalsnes were hit, recently by the looks of it. They’re checking Molde. But these things are designed to protect themselves. Apparently."

"No body," Kimberael pointed out. He made a face. "How sure are we about that? What, six-seven-eight- _nine _times now? That we know about? That's a little extreme, even for the Unseleighe."__

__Euriel raised an eyebrow. "Is it, now?"_ _

__"That little dark guy in Florø, you think he commands a vast army of willing sacrifices, do you?"_ _

__"I'll start contacting morgues. What is it?"_ _

__"What?"_ _

__"You're making a face like you have a hunch."_ _

__"Eh. It's probably nothing. Just... I’m thinking of that grotty old human in Måløy. Maybe check _their_ morgues too."_ _

__Kimberael looked at him dubiously, but resigned himself all the same._ _

____

***

At four in the morning, Althea Fleuriel sat in front of Fulla’s Tree, shivering a little and hating her life.

This wasn’t what she’d wanted to do. Her family hadn’t been able to afford one, but she thought she would be good in front of a camera. Hadn’t she emceed her high school’s talent show for three years in a row? Surely she didn’t need a degree from NUA to talk about small-town transfiguration competitions and the odd municipal election. But when she’d sent in her résumé in January, they told her they needed someone to guard this ridiculous tree. They didn’t say why or against who or what. She presumed not against the humans and the elves, both dark and light, who tied scraps of cloth to its branches or shoved coins into slits in the bark in the hope of wealth or fertility or both. But after weeks of staring at the tree, she thought she could pick out what they wanted kept safe: a point of volatility amidst the tree’s silvery glow of faith. Whatever kind of spell it was, it was strong enough to kill someone.

They did say that if she was successful, then there might be another job for her in the future, and who was she to turn her nose up at something that paid? 

So Allie sat here, warmly dressed and heavily glamoured, where she had a clear view of the tree, and watched it from 23.00 to 11.00 every day. Every single day. She’d asked, once, about getting a day off for her mother’s birthday party, but the man she reported to had said, "We pay you to sit and do nothing, don’t we? And you’re on the night shift, so it shouldn’t interfere with your ordinary daytime activities. But if that’s really too difficult for you, we can always get someone else." She’d protested that no, no, it was fine. But it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. She was tired. And cold. When she got home from a shift it took her forever to warm up, and then she had to go out and do it all over again. She... she _missed_ herself.

A car drove past, rounded a corner, and was gone. Somewhere in the night, someone whistled a snatch of a human devotional song that she recognized. She picked up the thread of the tune, knowing that glamour would keep the whistler from hearing her. " _...the rain is gone... I can see all obstacles in my way... something da da da dum, da da da dum... It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day_ ," she sang bleakly. Even if it was, she would be too tired to do anything about it. And seeing all the obstacles in her way did not help one bit. It was discouraging, was what it was.

She felt only the tiniest whisper of air before arms grabbed her, and a hand covered her mouth before she could scream. She bit down, and her teeth met the nylon and leather of a heavy winter glove. Another hand relieved her of her burner. She’d been sitting crosslegged, and was being held in such a way that she couldn’t shift her weight to use her legs. A metal band snaked around her chest and arms. 

Allie squirmed and bit, to no avail. Balefire would have helped, but was something they taught only at Dýranblað, and tuition there cost double what her family made in a year. If her captor tried to do anything else to her, she had defensive magics, but nothing that would get her out of this.

She heard footsteps crunching in the snow before another figure, silhouetted in the streetlights, came into her field of vision. He dropped to a crouch in front of her, breath rising in a cloud from his lips. A beard partially covered a face she’d seen in pictures and in nightmares. He smiled, and reached for her arm. When she recoiled with a sob, he dropped his hand, his smile gone, his expression troubled. "It’s going to be okay. We’re not going to hurt you."

Allile watched him walk unerringly to one of the many slits in the tree’s bark, pull out a single krone, and thread a piece of paper around it. When he took out a small jar and unscrewed the lid to reveal a small pool of energy, she understood now what he was going to do. He was committing suicide. Becoming a martyr for the Dissolution. Well, good riddance.

She’d heard these things could be gruesome, but she made herself watch. This was a story that was going to need telling. He looked up at Allie and her captor, and waved them back. The arms around her dragged her back another metre or so into the trees.

He touched his fingertip to the paper, and was enveloped by a bolt of fierce blue light. It would have hit Allie, too, if he hadn’t sent them further back. Probably not enough to kill, but it would have burned her horribly. As it was, it just dazzled her a little.

When it cleared, he had dropped the coin and stood slumped against the tree. She was momentarily disappointed that it hadn’t been more spectacular. Then, with a shuddering exhalation, he straightened up. "That’s it," he said, his voice ragged.

Next to Allie’s head, a glove waved. 

"No, I don’t. I think we have to go to... to the source." He motioned with his chin to Allie. "Better take care of her the way we talked about. I’ll be-- You know where." He turned away, turned back, and said very gently to her, "Listen, you did your best. It was pretty good."

Tears ran down Allie’s cheeks as she watched him walk away. When he was gone, the hand left her mouth--she screamed, knowing it was useless, knowing that under glamour she would sound like a calling bird or a barking dog--and strong arms and the metal band around her hauled her to her feet. Sobbing, pleading, offering up all kinds of fantastic bargains if she could only live, she was marched through town. Based on where the hands were, her captor was about her height. She kept trying to turn her head, to see them, but all she could make out were shapes out of the corner of her eye, spectral blue light, and the odd flash of colour.

When she saw where they were going, she quieted down. "What... what?"

There was no answer. The gloved hand came out and opened the door with a standard unlock spell. Then there was a sharp shove from behind, and she stumbled forward, into the vestibule of her own apartment. The door slammed, and locked from the outside. She only had to fumble the knob around again to open it, but by that time the street was empty again. 

Allie sat on the stairs for a long moment, shaking with cold and adrenalin. Surely that must be allowed. Then she reached into her pocket, for her phone, to let them know what had happened, and found a Kvikk Lunsj and a packet of hot chocolate mix. With marshmallows. There was a note wrapped around the Kvikk Lunsj. "Sorry, can’t find a way to do this without scaring you. This isn’t your fault. Nothing to do with you. Here’s something for warming up."

She found her phone, and dialled her supervisor. _Call Failed_ , the screen said, playing its sad little noise. She tried again. _Call Failed_.

After another long moment she climbed the stairs, and made herself the hot chocolate, and took deep breaths. Maybe they’d poisoned it, but she took a sip and waited, and it was fine. She kept taking sips and waiting until she’d downed the whole thing. She tried the call again, twice, and again after she’d crawled into bed and slept and awakened with early afternoon light streaming through the windows. By then she was getting frantic, and this time she tried the head office. _Call Failed._

Shamefaced, she went back to Fulla’s Tree, in broad daylight. There was one person she worked with that she knew she could get hold of, and he had probably already reported her for not being at her post. But he wasn’t there either. 

(Ivar had in fact shown up at 11.00 sharp. He had seen that she was not there, that everything was blown, and pulled out his own cell phone to report it, and his own calls had failed. Finally he decided that one of two things could have happened: the site had been attacked and Allie had been taken, in which case it was a bad idea to stay around here, or they had ended the project without telling him, which was just like them and which also meant that there was no point staying around here. He’d gone home, tried three more times to get hold of someone, and then given up and shamefacedly asked his aunt if he could go back to working in her shop.) 

The next day, Allie went in person to the regional office, and stammered out her predicament to the elf in charge, who told her that he had never heard of her, or the division she claimed had hired her to watch Fulla’s Tree in Eina, and why on Earth would anyone care about a tree? 

After she left, nearly in tears, the chief phoned his head office, and made inquiries about this other division. Kilpi. Head office told him, in no uncertain terms, that it was none of his business. If they had asked him why he’d wanted to know, he would have told them about the girl who’d come in, distraught and claiming to have been employed by Kilpi, saying that she’d been attacked and her charge compromised. But they’d hung up on him, and he wasn’t going to call them back.

Eventually, Allie phoned the dálki. An officer came to her apartment and interviewed her. No, she wasn’t hurt. No, no one had been in contact since. Yes, she knew who she saw! No, she wasn’t afraid for her life; just her job. She had told them what she did, what _he_ had done, and through this the officer’s frown deepened and deepened. They asked her if she could get in touch with her employer, and she said she’d tried, to no avail. 

"Stop trying," the officer advised. "I’ll take your story back to the miðstoð with me. I can’t say too much about an active investigation, but it fits a tip that we got. If anyone from work _does_ get in touch with you, call us immediately."

***

"I was thinking," Calle said, "we could set it up so that people think they’re interviewing as a receptionist, and we’re just going to see how they are at answering the phone. But the ring is the train horn."

"Could be," Bård said thoughtfully, examining his drink. He’d needed a lot of lubrication to get into a headspace where he could even think of this stuff. "Or what about, what about if we say it’s near the airport and every time they get a call we have the sound of a plane flying overhead so they can’t hear anything?" Planes, of course, reminded him of Vegard, and he took another swallow, quick, and waggled the empty glass at the bartender with an ingratiating little smile.

"Speaking of planes," Calle said, "we should really get your brother in on this conversation."

"He’s been pretty under the weather," Bård said. 

"I know," Calle said. "I'm getting concerned about him, to tell you the truth. He’s been various kinds of weirder ever since Hallowe’en. I’m a little concerned about _you_ , too. Did you two have a fight or something?"

"No, no," Bård said with a dismissive wave of his hand that nearly knocked over the fresh drink the bartender had just brought him. "I just don’t feel like hearing about airplanes for half an hour." He rested his chin on his forearm and stirred his drink with his finger. Actually, he would like nothing better than to have Vegard at his side, talking enthusiastically about airplanes and gyroscopes and his boat and the position of the sun.

"Then it’s settled," Calle said. "I’m texting him, and if he doesn’t want to join us, he can just say no."

"Bloody hell," Bård moaned, "I said that part out loud, didn’t I?"

Forty-five minutes later, a hand fell on his shoulder, and when he turned he nearly jumped out of his skin. 

"Vegard!" Calle cried, and enveloped the smaller man in a hug.

Finn thumped Calle’s back, and gave Bård’s shoulder a squeeze. "So tell me these new ideas," he said.

***

An hour and a half later, Calle took his leave of them. Finn tugged Bård’s arm. "Come on." He walked Bård out of the bar, and led him three doors down to an all-night coffee shop, and poured him into a booth.

"What?" Bård said blearily. 

"I don’t even want to put you on the tram yet." Finn disappeared, and came back with coffee for himself and tea for Bård. He was wearing his brass-framed glasses again, and when he took his hat and scarf off, his hair fell to his shoulders, and there was the glint of gold in his ears. 

Bård poured sugar into his tea. "Your ideas suck, Weber."

"Oh, probably." After doctoring his coffee, Finn said, "You called me Finn three times."

"Christ. Did he notice?"

"He thought it was funny as hell."

"You’re not my brother."

"I know."

Bård stared deep into his tea. "Thanks for coming out, though." 

Finn shrugged. "Least I can do. How... how is he?"

Bård’s head came up. "You’re kidding. Are you kidding? If you’re kidding, it’s not funny."

The colour drained from Finn’s face. "Is he alive?"

"You’re not kidding. Nobody told you."

Finn turned aside, covering his face with one hand. "Oh gods... oh gods, no..."

Bård touched his arm. "No, no, Finn, no. He’s alive, as far as I know, he’s alive."

Some of the tension went out of Finn’s shoulders, but he wouldn’t take his hand off his face. "What happened?"

"He’s missing. He disappeared. Weeks ago. We haven’t said anything to the press or anyone. I thought... I just thought someone would tell you."

Finn shook his head, and dabbed at his eyes with a napkin. "Nobody tells me anything. Brynjar has ‘made promises and taken confidences,’ whatever that means. And... I love him and I trust him, and he helps me when I need him, but..." He shook his head a little. 

"You trust him?"

"Yeah."

"Because he’s a god?"

Finn seemed to find that funny. He shook his head again. "Because he’s made of you guys."

Bård blinked back tears. "So are you, you know."

"Yeah," Finn said, with a little smile. "I guess I am." He dabbed at his eyes again. "So... no clue where Vegard is? At all?"

"None. I’ve been doing all the investigating I know how to do discreetly, but no one will tell me a thing. I even hired a private eye, but the only person he found was you, and I had to put the kibosh on that really quickly. I told him Melantha was a relative, and had to call the whole thing off in case he dug deeper and found out she wasn’t."

Finn had started to laugh. "I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I should be appalled. Oh gods, Bård, I’m sorry." He sobered, abruptly. "I _am_ sorry, you know. All of this is because of me. If it wasn’t for me--"

Bård gestured helplessly over his tea. "If it wasn’t for you and Brynjar, we’d have both been either dead or in jail for nearly a year now--if there was a world at all."

"Doubt that last part," Finn said sensibly. "Fenrir just needed to stretch his legs. It was a little tiny space they were keeping him in. They didn’t feed him, but he couldn’t starve." He grimaced. "I still catch myself thinking, sometimes, that I should have just died when we were done."

Bård frowned, and put a hand on Finn’s arm. "Finn. No. Don’t think that for a second. Look, if I had known... I took you with me instead of him because I thought you would heal. If I had known, I never would have left you. I never would have _let_ you." 

Finn stared into his coffee. "I know that. Why do you think I didn't say anything? Even then I knew, it's your brother who should be sitting here, safe and whole. But you’re right. I’m not him."

Bård reached out and cupped Finn’s face in his hands, and made Finn look at him. "No no no," he said. "No no no no no no no no no. You got it?"

Finn took Bård’s wrists and pried them away from his face. "You are _spectacularly_ drunk, Bård."

"I want you to say it. Say, ‘I should not have died back there, and Vegard did the right thing."

"Of _course_ Vegard did the right thing."

"Say it! Or I’ll break into your house and lick everything in your refrigerator."

Finn laughed gently. "I should not have died, and Vegard did the right thing."

Now Bård rested his own chin in his hands. "I miss my weird little big brother so much," he sighed. "He’s not even in my head anymore. And I don’t know where to begin to look for him."

"Keep hydrating," Finn said, gesturing at Bård’s tea. As Bård drank, Finn said, "If Brynjar is looking after him, he's in good hands."

"Not because Brynjar's a god, but because Brynjar's made of us," Bård said.

Finn shrugged. "It can be two things."

"What _happened_ , Finn? With you and Vegard."

"You keep asking me that," Finn said, "but the answer is the same. I don't know. Right around the time the story broke, I got a message from him telling me to stay away. And then he just stopped answering me. I keep asking myself, did I do something? Say the wrong thing? But I think it’s probably because this all started because of me. It’s one thing to want to do the right thing, but when it takes away your freedom, and your access to your family, and weeks of your whole bloody livelihood... I don’t blame him a bit."

Bård shook his head. "That’s not like Vegard, though. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, if you did something he would say something." And then he thought of the great number of things that Vegard had done that were not like Vegard at all. Palling around with a god. Giving up his magic. Getting addicted to that blue thing. Leaving behind Helene and his kids. "At least... it’s not like he was before."

***

Before the great hearth at Valaskjolf, Brynjar Kvam had mortared stone and hewn wood and worked iron. He had commanded the waters to flow, and caused the ice to creep down from the northern wastes. Finally, last week he had gone to Åhlens for towels and kitchen accessories, and he was well pleased.

Now, Wednesday, the day after the first regular taping of _News from Nobody_ , he sat in his new breakfast nook, on one of four chairs he had paid for because although he knew building comfortable seating was theoretically possible with the materials he had to hand, he just didn’t have it in him. He was eating a grapefruit, with a grapefruit spoon whose handle was shaped like a stack of grapefruits. And plenty of sugar, because he didn’t really like grapefruit. 

He was feeling a bit triumphant. The taping had gone magnificently. And today he and Finn were going to meet with a source who claimed to have a big story about the election. She was afraid to raise the allegations through official channels. Finn had told her at the outset that they were comedians and not journalists, but she didn't care, she told them; the nature of the revelation was such that if she could just get it into the public eye, people would demand a government investigation. Brynjar misliked the idea of getting comedy and public outrage to do the jobs of responsible journalism and democracy, but he understood her concerns about coming forward. Besides, he was pretty sure that he already knew what she was going to say. 

He frowned at the big glass dish, piled high with grapefruit, on the counter in front of him. He’d certainly bought a lot of the ridiculous things, but they had probably been cheap, and he’d wanted to fill the glass dish. This was one he’d made, with lightning, before shaking his head at himself and just going out and buying a set: he was pretty sure that he could pass the bubbles and the scorch marks off as artisanal, but equally sure that cutlery scraping against it would start a race between the glass and his nerves, to see which would shatter first. 

Wishful thinking, perhaps, he thought as he contemplated the amount of grapefruit he was going to have to eat, and took a swig of juice. He wrinkled his nose. Grapefruit juice. He supposed he could put everything on the feasting table and magick it into the stasis chamber, but it didn’t feel quite fair to inflict this much grapefruit on whoever ended up succeeding him here. Was he unconsciously treating a deficiency or something? He put the peel on the compost heap, and washed his spoon and his dish with... grapefruit-scented dish soap? His hand soap was grapefruit scented too, he saw. "I doesn’t even _like_ grapefruit," he told Freki, plaintively.

The wolf raised his eyebrows at him. _Could’ve fooled me, sunshine._

Had there been a sale? What had he been thinking? He couldn’t even remember. He dried his hands. The kitchen towel had big cheerful grapefruits on it.

"Me H. Tapdancing Me," he said softly, eyes going wide. There had been nothing, nothing at all. Except this. "How long have this been going on?" He counted back to when he’d gone grocery shopping. Three days. When had he bought the kitchen stuff? A week. Nearly a week. There was no mistaking this... but why like _this ___? Why hadn’t he seen? Why hadn’t he known?

After the first week or so following Finn’s breaking of the spells, Brynjar hadn’t devoted much thought to the persistent null spot in the grey eye’s vision; he was just happy to have any vision there at all, and after his adventures he supposed getting all of his divine faculties back perfectly intact was a bit much to ask for. Now he squinted into this spot, where his vision seemed to contract to a puckered, shimmering point. He turned his head this way and that, and the null spot stayed put. Not his vision, then. This was clearly and unequivocally a _thing_. If a message had come from behind it, or within it, or however it worked, then who knew what would happen to it? 

Definitely worth looking into, such as it was. But right now he had a message to deliver, and he hoped he wasn’t already too late. He closed his eyes, and sent his voice through to Midgard and across the mountains and the fjords. 

__

***

_Excuse, Helene. I are Brynjar Kvam with breaking news. This just in: pamplemousse, Helene. Pamplemousse. And I are sure all of his love._

***

The rain had been falling steadily since before (an entirely theoretical, as far as Bård was concerned) sunrise. It was messing with his head. It was nine in the morning, and it felt and looked like five in the afternoon. He sat on his desk, picking listlessly at the guitar, trying to formulate a song. Nothing he came up with was funny. He carefully kept himself from wishing he had someone to bounce it off.

His phone rang, and he seized on it gratefully. Helene? "Meet me at your house straightaway," she said.

"Helene, what’s up? Is it Vegard? Is he okay?"

"I have something for you. It’ll explain itself." 

He’d taken the tram, so he got Calle to drive him. When the older man dropped him off at his house, Helene stood on the doorstep, huddled under an umbrella but nonetheless drenched. "Helene, come in," Bård said, taking her arm. "Are you okay?" She got as far as the foyer and lowered her umbrella, but would go no further. Her face showed a strange combination of tension and relief. "Are you okay?" Bård said again. "You look... strange." 

"I’m fine," she said. "I can’t stay; Gry from down the street is watching the kids. And anyway, you need to get through a lot in as little time as possible, and you don’t need me for anything other than this. Here." What she held in her hand was lit, faintly. 

A small blue orb, warm and a little waxy to the touch, glowing gently. With a cry of fright, Bård tried to jerk his hand away.

Helene seized his wrist, and met his eyes with a steely glare as she pressed it into his hand. It felt like completing a circuit; the orb sang to him, promising visions. " _Take it._ " Her voice softened. "Now it’s okay. Trust your brother, Bård. I know you haven’t been, and it’s helped until now, but everything just changed. Okay?"

"I’ll do this for you, Helene."

"Whatever. Just _do it_." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, her wet hair slapping his neck. Then she wheeled, and was gone, the door closing behind her.

Bård stood in the foyer for a long time. The house was silent; Maria must be out. He went into his home studio. He closed and locked the door, and, stomach fluttering, set the lit ball on the desk in front of him. The moment his fingers left it, the singing in his mind stopped. He stared into its blue depths, and picked it up again, feeling it react with his skin. 

_Trust your brother, Bård._

He gave it the little magical nudge it was asking him for, and braced himself for his first hit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Rik Emmett's "Calling St. Cecilia" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsq7B6KiMOo


	23. The Vision in the Orb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A secure channel / Tea with the Queen / Vegard closes the door

_"Hi hi," Vegard said. He was in a hospital bed with the top raised. He looked like hell, but there was a weary smile on his pale face, and Bård could tell this had been recorded awhile ago, because there was a_ wholeness _to his brother that he hadn’t seen in months. He was talking into something he held in his hand. "This is for Helene right now, and Bård eventually. They slipped me a couple of these things... I shouldn’t use my phone, because they say there’s something coming that makes even Chuck’s phone not safe, but skribs are quantum-entangled and DNA-locked, _and_ there’s no trouble about glamour, because the--" He glanced off to the side, and then dove under the sheet, and grinned sneakily. His voice dropped to nearly a whisper._

_"Right. Anyway. Yeah. Didn’t like being stabbed much. What you didn’t know, and what no one is going to tell you except me, because everything was set for maximum stealth, is that the knife was spelled..._

***

I don’t know how long it was, but I felt like I wandered the halls for hours. Sometimes I thought I might be dreaming, the way sometimes things would go all misty and slippy, but I could smell the stone, you know that cold stone smell, and feel the flagstones under my feet. And then I saw light ahead, and it was a set of candles, right, on the wall, on either side of a painting. It never actually changed, I mean, it looked the same all the time, but sometimes it was just a regular portrait of a woman sitting and smiling, and sometimes it was a woman standing on a mountain and I couldn’t tell if she was just surrounded by lightning or brandishing it like a whip, except that it was always the same picture.

Suddenly, then, I was in the picture too. It was a drawing room with a lot of ancient heavy furniture, and I was wearing a suit and _tails_. It was really cool. I didn’t like the pants though. They were this really heavy fabric, and the cut was different, and I wouldn’t have minded the cut except that the fabric was so heavy, and-- Anyway. There was this table with claw feet, and it had a cloth on it and a teapot and cups. And a little man poured the tea. He looked kind of creepy, and he didn’t speak at all, but he smiled, so I smiled back, so he smiled harder. I think maybe he wasn’t used to people smiling at him, and it made him really happy when it happened. 

The woman was there too. She said, "Welcome, Vegard."

I said thanks, and gave her a hug. Maybe I shouldn’t have; she looked surprised about it. Then I said, "I don’t really know how I got here. Am I intruding?"

"Not at all," she said. "Rather, I’m the one who’s intruding on you, I fear."

"This isn’t my castle," I said, laughing a little. Well, it was nice, but very dark and weighty. Neither of us would be able to, like, live in it. "If I had something like this, I’m sure I would know about it."

She laughed with me, but it turned sour on her face and she just looked sad. "I’m afraid I’m the one who arranged to have you stabbed," she said. "Right now you’re in a coma in the infirmary at Innilokun Ríki. You’re going to be all right. But I needed to arrange a meeting with you. I have a proposition for you."

It sounds bizarre, but up until that moment I hadn’t even remembered. Now I did. My teacup rattled on its saucer. "I don’t know who you are," I said, "but for future reference, you might want to just try plying me with chocolate."

She laughed again. "Oh, dear. My dear. My sister-in-law was right about you, Freyja rest her soul. I’m the Queen of Air and Darkness, Vegard. But you can call me Mab."

"I don’t really know about..." I waited for her to finish the sentence with a suggestion, and she didn’t; just raised her eyebrows at me. "...you."

"Oh," she said. "I am to the svartalfar what the Bright Court is to the lios alfar. Does that help?"

"I guess," I said slowly. "I thought the Bright Court _were_ the lios alfar."

"Your Storting is the People," Mab said, "but not all of your people are the Storting."

"I thought your Storting was the Samkoma."

"It is," she sighed, "and creating it was a huge victory for... everyone, frankly. But before the Samkoma, there was the Bright Court, and there was _my_ court. They served the interests of the lios alfar, I did my best to serve the interests of the svartalfar, and we were perpetually at war."

"I see," I said. "So... what do you do now? And why does it involve stabbing me?"

"Both the Bright Court and I gave up our respective kingdoms," she said, "but we both still care what goes on, we still have a certain amount of wealth and resources, and we both want our--the people we had previously thought of as our own to do well. I've tried to exercise a certain amount of restraint, partly because by and large I trust the democratic process more than I trust anything I could contribute, and partly because I'm only one woman and I think I've bloody well earned a few centuries in the bath with some expensive chocolates--"

"You'd get very pruney," I interjected.

"--but _something_ very curious is going on, and I have tried to address it through all of the nice above-board channels and been thwarted. Now it's time to try something new."

"Okay," I said.

"You've no doubt heard about our soaring crime rate."

"I haven't."

"Well," she said, "criminal convictions have increased fivefold in the past decade."

"That's a lot," I said. "Is it because of more crime, or did they change the laws or something?"

"There was a crackdown on dark magic in 2006," she said. "In 2007, allegedly as a response to all that dark magic they found going on, and probably, frankly, because certain elements of the Bright Court wanted revenge for the passing of the SULA Act, the Samkoma passed legislation that expanded the definition of dark magic and created the Peace Division, and diverted a lot of resources to it. What you did for your changeling friends back there was one of the things they outlawed, amidst a huge media campaign that made it seem like a new and urgent problem. And then at the beginning of this year, the definition was expanded again, and a lot of things were outlawed that you really have to stretch to call dark magic, but that are allegedly precursors to dark magic."

"So it really doesn't count," I said. "It's not a jump in crime if you're making more laws for people to break."

"Very astute," she said. "Now: here is the curious thing. What would you say if I, told you that Innilokun Ríki's size has doubled in the past decade?"

"I would say it must have been really big and empty before, to handle a fivefold increase in convictions. Or how is that possible?"

"When you were sentenced, Vegard, did they offer you other alternatives?"

"Yeah," I said. "They said they'd let me go if I gave up my magic. But I refused of course." I frowned at her. "They sold it really hard. Pushed it. Is that what this is about?"

She pursed her lips and nodded. "Extraction is a very old punishment, Vegard. We used to pair it with exile, as a punishment for crimes such as unfounded killing curses, or blood sacrifice with unwilling victims, where there were mitigating circumstances. There was an element of... forbearance in it. If a person could survive on their own or among humans, without magic for a few months, they had a second chance. Far from us."

"For a few months," I echoed. "They made it sound like it would be forever. But I could handle a few months, if it would let me get back to our show."

She held up one finger. "And there, my dear, is our problem. It's permanent now. And it never used to be."

I frowned, and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Precisely my reaction, when I realized. In the first place, there aren’t a lot of people who remember how it was. We’re talking centuries, and the people it actually happened to were at least expelled from the community, and moreover tended not to survive long enough for their magic to grow back. In the second place, it's not a thing that people talk about now. If it’s happened to you, well, we don’t exile people anymore, but neither do we forget, and that makes moving on hard enough."

She leaned forward, sitting on the edge of her chair, and looked at me so intensely that I had to look away. "So. To deal, ostensibly, with an untenably high prison population, we have brought back the ancient punishment of stripping people of their magic. At the same time, we have vastly expanded its scope, to cover crimes that aren’t very severe, that weren’t even illegal a decade ago. And the magic, when it is taken, stays gone. Does this suggest anything to you?"

I’ve been reading up, but I still didn’t know enough magic to puzzle it out. I’d think that they just wanted to take magic away from anyone with any hint of criminal tendencies, which I suppose I can see for _really_ bad criminals. But where does it go, then? Everyone kept telling me about the spells and the fatigue, Ooh, the energy had to come from somewhere, and I agree I should have known... well, it has to _go_ somewhere too. "Someone is stealing people’s magic and keeping it in a big pile somewhere?" I joked, to have said something, so that she’d tell me.

"Bingo," she said.

"But... how would that even work?"

"That's what we need to find out. And that's where you come in."

I sighed, and looked down into my tea. This was going to be uncomfortable. "I can't actually do all the things they say I can do," I told her. "I have a ridiculously little bit of magic, and a bad reputation. Or a really good one, depending on how you look at it."

She grinned. "I know."

"You do?"

"You're ex-military--"

"I'm still in the Home Guard," I corrected. "I dig a latrine like you wouldn't believe."

"Military, then. You're multitalented, resourceful, and good at keeping a straight face. And you’re on our side."

"I’m not on anyone’s side," I told her. "I just think things should be fair, and I don’t like it when people get hurt."

Her eyebrows went up at that, but she said, "Just so. You have, as you said, a little bit of magic that you use to spectacular effect. A few of the people I have talked to have noted your precision and control. You have no standing, but you have a healthy career that does not depend on magic whatsoever. You have a changeling who has already stepped in at your job. You have two younger brothers, one of whom also knows magic, and with him you share Huginn's eyes. And we've been hearing some really interesting things about _his_ changeling."

"Brynjar's really all right," I said in a hurry. "It's just the way he is. Nothing wrong with him. He's tried to, to do other things, and it just doesn't work."

"I mean, by all accounts he was subjected to similar depredations to the sort we are investigating, and a certain corvid friend of mine reports that he managed to escape."

My jaw dropped. Brynjar's group. It made a lot of sense. Remember, Bård, you thought they might be taking his magic on purpose? And I think that's what decided me. I know that's not very good. But first and foremost I never met any of the prisoners who got their magic ripped out, whereas I will never forget Brynjar bruised and half-blind and crying in Finn’s arms. Second I trust Brynjar, because when someone convinced him being a god was wrong, even though he loved it he tried to give it up. And I don't trust something that wants to be a god, that wants to steal it from other people. But I would have to be very careful, because... I don’t know if I should say. I promised not to say. Anyway... 

"What do you want me to do?" I asked. 

"Agree to have your magic extracted," she said. And then she must have seen the face I made, because she said, "You’re not the only skilled and trustworthy person in Innilokun Ríki who we’re approaching, but you _are_ the only one of these who’s already done quite well for himself with no magic whatsoever. If we can get to the bottom of this, and stop it, you’ll get it back. We’ll place some trace spells, light ones that they’ll never notice. We'll find out where it's going. In all likelihood, raising a stink about it will be enough to address what is going on and get it reversed. If not, we’ll have to resort to other methods."

"Who do _you_ think is doing it?" I asked.

"My best guess? The Peace Division. They’re the ones who could use all that power, and they would be utterly convinced of their own rightness, too."

"Okay," I sighed. "I'll--"

But before I was even finished speaking, there was a feeling like I was falling, and I jerked back and suddenly I was standing in the corridor again, looking at the painting. I knocked on the frame, but she didn’t let me in. 

I felt less foggy now than I had when I was in the corridors before. I paced a little, thinking about it. How it would work is, you know how you tap into that other level of abstraction, right? If someone has shown you how. Well, that means there’s an access point, right? On this other level you have to have some contact between, like, the abstract stuff that is _you_ , your mind or your soul or whatever, and the things that you act on. I’m just going to call it a mind, though, I think, because "soul" is a little uncomfortable. 

Anyway, if you can remove that access point, you can’t do magic anymore. And when I thought about that, what Mab was saying made perfect sense, because, like, that would grow back. Right? It’s not like an arm, where it’s like, genes and stuff and if you lose it it’s gone. This access point is a thing that you built. With your mind. If something takes it away, as long as you have a mind, you should be able to build it again. Unless something keeps taking it away. 

I also spent a little bit of time trying to figure out, like, what was actually going on. I felt perfectly awake and everything around me felt real and vivid, but now I knew it wasn’t. I pinched myself a couple of times, and it made things feel less real, but none of it went away.

After a bit more time, maybe an hour total, I turned a corner, and it was like jerking awake from a sleep. I was still sitting with Mab and the creepy little guy, in the same chair. I didn’t feel cramped, like I’d been sitting in one place for a long time, but I didn’t feel like I’d been walking around for an hour either. My tea was cold, though. "Well?" she said.

I started to tell her about the access point thing, but she smiled and said she knew already. So I said, "I know how I’ll ask. I’ll just say that being stabbed scared me, that I want to go home to my family and I’ll do whatever it takes. That makes it sound like it’s my idea. No one will be suspicious."

"So you will do it?"

"Of course. That’s what I said, isn’t it?"

"Oh! I... I suppose it is. I wanted to see if some time to yourself would produce a different answer."

I hadn’t realized that that was what that time was supposed to be for. But even if I wasn’t completely sold on the idea before, the fact that she gave me extra time to change my mind counted for a lot with me. "Thank you," I said. "I’m in."

"Capital," she said, putting her hands together. "Let’s waste no time then. We’ll get you briefed, trained, spelled, and outfitted."

I really liked that idea. It makes a difference, you know, to go from someone who’s being punished because they’ve done something wrong to someone who is being punished because they’re working undercover to do something right. 

But now Mab frowned at me, and put her thumb under my chin, and made me turn my head this way and that while she squinted at me. "Hmm... there's that link with your brother," she said.

"Yeah."

"Can you get rid of that?"

"What? No. No! I don’t want to."

She looked at my face and said, "I guess we could try to reconfigure the..." She frowned. "Wait... no. No, Vegard, you need to shutter that connection."

"You couldn’t do the reconfiguring?"

"We probably could, but we’re going to be giving you extremely sensitive information, for one thing, and for another, you really don’t want him connected to you when they do the extraction."

"I trust him," I said. "He’s a jerk sometimes for the sake of good TV, but when it’s serious I would trust him with my life. _Have_ trusted him. And here I am, still."

"In a hospital bed, in an enchanted sleep," she reminded me. She shook her head once, decisively. "Someone with that kind of connection to you would be valuable, if something went wrong and you needed help. Do you think he’d do that?"

"You’ll have to ask him properly," I said, "but I think it’d be harder to stop him."

"Fine, then. I want him kept safe, and I’m sure you do too."

"Yeah," I said. 

"That means keeping him right out of this until we need him. I’m sorry, Vegard, I can tell how much this distresses you, but we need that link to go away, at least for awhile."

I didn’t like it, but it made sense. "We’ve talked about wanting to find a way to control it," I admitted, fiddling with my teacup. I thought about the Stone of Sælu, how it had the power to take us both out. And then I thought about being stabbed, how much that had hurt, and the way I’d felt myself being sucked down, and I wondered, Bård, I wondered how much of that _you_ felt...

"Vegard," Mab said a little sharply.

I looked down, and there was tea all over my pants, and my cup was in pieces in my hands. "Sorry!" I yelped. "I am so sorry." And I tried to magick it back together again, but I just made it go into more pieces.

She made a weird little face at me, but then she made a beckoning gesture and the pieces of my cup piled themselves on top of each other and became a cup again. 

I looked closely. Not even a seam. "Can... can you tell me how you do that?"

"It’s Class Five," she said, "and you’ve just agreed to give up your magic indefinitely."

"Yeah, but can you just tell me how?"

"You don’t change the way the atoms vibrate. You make them _want_ each other. And at the same time, you act on the spaces between them."

I turned the cup over and over in my hands, thinking about the atoms.

"Vegard?" she said.

I looked up. 

She held out her hands. I put the cup down and took them, and suddenly I was... you know how we’ve talked, Bård, about the link being like a window into each other’s thoughts? Suddenly we were standing at that window. It was like a patio door, nice and sleek and modern. There was a potted dwarf lilac next to it, and I’m not sure if that’s because of you, or because of my idea of you. Through the glass I could see, like, your mind, and on the other side of it you were eating dinner with your family, and suddenly I missed you so much that it hurt. But Mab was there too. When I looked at her straight on, she was a little shorter than me, but when I turned my head, out of the corner of my eye she was so big that she swallowed up everything else.

She went to the wall on one side of the doors. It was wood. Oak. She took a little knife out of nowhere, and handed it to me, handle first. "Bless the blade," she said.

"Bless it?" I echoed. "Um... okay. Nice blade. Good going."

She rolled her eyes. "Say, ‘I conjure thee to do me no harm.’ That should do. And then kiss it."

"I conjure thee to do me no harm," I said, and very carefully kissed it.

Then she drove the knife into the wall beside the door, and I let out a yell. It hurt unbelievably much, like, like getting a prostate exam through your nostrils with a rusty fish hook, and to hold me up she put an arm around me as she cut the wall, which was also somehow my mind. It bled. I watched it bleed. Then she had to let me go as she pulled up the flap she’d cut, and I curled up on the floor. Then she did the other side. 

When she was done, she helped me to my feet. "Doors," she said, showing me the flaps she’d carved out. They were wood on one side, and raw flesh on the other. And the lilac was gone. I thought about throwing up, but I really didn’t want to throw up in my own mind. "Now, close them."

I took hold of the doors she’d made over the window to your mind. At first they were slick under my hand, and then they firmed up. I took one last peek through, at you and all your thoughts, and then at your family, having dinner. I guess Jens had done something or said something, and you and Maria were trying really hard not to laugh. I waited there for awhile, watching their faces and feeling your laughter and how much you love them all, and Mab didn’t rush me. I’m going to take that moment with me, Bård. Whatever happens. It sounds like it might be awhile before we can open those doors up again. 

And then I turned away and shut them, and the flesh turned to two good, solid wooden doors. I am so sorry for how much that must have scared you. If it’s any consolation, it hurt more than anything I have ever done in my life. Except maybe the kidney stone. Yeah, probably that hurt more. 

Then I turned away and I was back in the drawing room, and I had to sit for a little while. I didn’t think it would feel as different as it felt. Remember when we were first...? Oh. I guess you won’t remember. But when we first got this thing, when we first ate Huginn’s eyes, we were linked up without even realizing. I remember standing on the promenade, playing my old Backpacker--you remember that thing?--and being, like, aware of you behind me, but it didn’t seem strange. Now that it was gone, though, I just needed to sit and, like, recalibrate. And Mab pulled out a book and let me be for a little while.

Afterward, she gave me sandwiches and cake and had the little man show me to my room. It was really fancy, and it had silk pyjamas and a toothbrush and soap and these huge fluffy towels. The window showed me this beautiful dark forest at first. Then when I was finished brushing my teeth--the bathroom was modern _and_ old-fashioned, like the tub had claw feet and the sink was an old ceramic mixing bowl and Helene, remind me to tell you about the cabinet because I think we can do something like that in the sewing room--I looked over and it was a beach with blue sand and a magenta sky, and huge sleek shapes diving and surfacing out by the horizon. And when I closed the curtains when I was going to bed, I saw that it had changed again, to show a sky full of stars with constellations I swear we don’t have.

I had a nightmare, Bård. I was running through the dark forest, looking for you, and I couldn’t find you and I couldn’t feel you and I thought you were dead. I woke up and I reached out for you in my mind and still couldn’t feel you--just this sore place where our link had been. And then I remembered, and... well... I didn’t think I’d get back to sleep, but I must have. 

The next morning I woke up with the creepy little man opening up the curtains. Today the window showed the middle of a green forest, with sunlight turning the leaves gold and everything wet with dew, and tree trunks five of us would have to join hands to put our arms around. There was porridge for breakfast, the savoury porridge you and I used to get in Varggrav, Bård, but there was meat in this instead of nuts. I asked later what it was, and Mab said pigeon. 

For clothes the little man left me some kind of soft, loose black thing to put on, with black tights. I looked like an assassin. It was really comfortable. And warm. Castles are drafty. That's why they have tapestries, for insulation, because they're made of stone, and also the size of them can make them damp and chilly. This one had honest-to-goodness glass in the windows, double-paned at that, but the old ones didn't. 

I went down and someone named Caitriona met me in the hallway and briefed me. She wore these long tattered rags, and her eyes were red and weepy and her smile was a little scary, but she was really nice. She tested me on weapons, and on my magic, and she even gave me a couple of math problems. I got the vibe that she thought I took too long to explain my answers, but the thing is, I did get them right. 

Then we had lunch. I had smørbrød with salmon and this really nice salad with dill in it. I don’t know exactly what Caitriona had, because she kept it really well wrapped up. It was the size of a footlong, but it was grey and it had toes, so it might have been just, like, a foot. I asked her about herself, and she’s a banshee. She’s originally from Ireland, but she moved here with her family in the seventies, because her mother missed trees. The forests in Ireland used to be huge, but now they cover only ten percent of the land, as opposed to thirty-three percent here. I told her it's nearly forty-five percent in Russia, but she said if I think the Bright Court is bad, the Dolia are worse. She told me she dropped out of a Master of Library Sciences program. We bonded a little over Microsoft Excel. And after lunch, she taught me a bit of fighting and a bit more magic. 

The whole thing was really weird. It was half like being in the army, and half like fall 2013 when we were in America and Asia and people were treating us like superstars. There was all sorts of learning and testing and exercises, and then I’d finish with that and there would be luxury meals and my fancy room and honest-to-goodness sirens after dinner. Not the wheeeeeeooooo-wheeeeeeeoooooo kind; the mermaid kind, singing in the moat.

The second day, they gave me the spells. Mab got an expert, a Doctor Sinnbøye. It was more complicated than I thought. I had to go through six different fittings. The last one was the hardest. They linked it to my magic, and I had to hold a wave form for twenty-three minutes. It took only one try for me though, and they said that usually doesn’t happen.

At first I could feel the spells, especially the third one. It was really annoying. Now I can’t anymore, unless I use my magic, and then it’s like there’s something shimmery on the edge of my magic sight. But the whole point of these is that I’m not going to be able to _use_ magic for awhile, so it’s not going to bother me.

I had to sleep, after, and they checked me to make sure the spells were settling and my dreams wouldn’t tangle them up. And then Mab told me I was going home. Well, back to my own actual body. 

Before she sent me back, she taught me how to use this thing that I’m using to record. It’s called a skrib, and one of the great things about it is that if you use a DNA key on it, no one can eavesdrop, not when you’re recording or playing back or anything, because it generates... noise, basically, massive amounts of interference, and the only ones the noise makes sense to are the people whose DNA has been fed in. If it was new tech, that would make it illegal, but it’s so old, and such a small thing, that no one cares.

This one I’ll just record with, and then you can play back the messages that I leave for you, and if I need Bård the messages are here for him too, even though Bård, my brother, my colleague, my blood, you’re a tough one to get a DNA sample from. We probably shouldn’t even talk about any of this face to face, Helene, but what I tell you through here is secure. Then I’ve got another one that I’m going to use to communicate with Mab, and you and Bård are both cleared for that one too, but that’s a just-in-case thing. 

And, um, let’s see. Helene, get in touch with Mab using the other skrib if I use the word... hm. _Inshallah_. That is something I am never going to say in casual conversation. Okay, and if I use the word _pamplemousse_ , that’s your signal that I need Bård and you should hand all this stuff over to him. And we have to both hope he listens to me and keeps up with his magic. 

Okay. I think that’s it for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Spoons' "When Time Turns Around" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mClOYoP2hcc


	24. Shards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The decision / Inside / A wrenching instance of dramatic irony / Fragments / Still raw / The summer’s silver lining / Everything hurts: Reprise / The missing part of me / Mending / A housecall: Reprise / Divine intervention / Ensom

Yeah. Me again. Well, it’s not going to be anyone else, not on this channel. 

I told them. Told a guard. And a doctor. About taking the extraction, I mean. The guard wanted to know if I was sure. I said I was. I wouldn’t be, if it was just me. Part of me just wants to finish serving my time and get out, but... I’ve got this other stuff. I promised.

Then one of the verndari from Innilokun Ríki came to see me. I had to sign some papers, and my advocate had to sign them too. Ben thinks this is all bad news. He wants me to serve my time. But he did sign. I told him this is what I want. It's not, really. I mean it is, but it's not. You know? But someone has to do it, and Mab's right, it's better that they use a person who doesn't actually need their magic.

***

Okay. Here I am, back on the inside. I was really dreading it, but you know, it’s not _so_ bad. Not now, anyway. My first few nights here they put me in a temp room. Bård’s seen what that kind of thing does to me. Remember the interrogation room at Korgfjelltunnelen? It’s like, you know how fluorescent lights _flicker_? Imagine the whole world doing that, to _all_ of your senses. I threw up eight times that first night. And they offered to move me to another room, even, but I said no, because I figured it’s like being seasick, you spend a few days in utter misery and then you get your sea legs, and I don’t want to go through life with entire rooms I can’t go into. So I toughed it out and eventually stopped throwing up, but the headache never went away, and after a week I took them up on their offer and they moved me somewhere else. Now here I am. Cheery, huh? Own bed. Top bunk. I have to be a little bit careful. I have a roommate, Klaus. He’s in for cursing his boss, but right now he’s in the gym. It's not as nice as a human prison, I think. I mean a Norwegian one. It's probably better than an American one.

I’m getting cold feet, now. A little. I want to be home so much, and I know I’ve got this promise I made, but I keep thinking, would it have been _that_ hard to last another couple of months? I told them I was scared to get stabbed again, but that’s a lie. The one who did it, his name’s Stian, he was just working for the queen. I feel bad, because they told me he got a bunch of extra time added to his sentence, but they just sort of shook their heads at me when I said I was sorry. And they wouldn't let me near him to say anything in person. I guess I didn’t think about that one hard enough, huh? I hope she can help him. 

But I made a promise, right? Right. It happens Monday. And I signed all the papers, so it’s too late to even think about regretting it.

***

Today’s the day. I’ll be glad to see you again, in person. Both of you. None of this quantum entanglement nonsense. I’m a little nervous for the procedure, though. Some of the guys say that you’re awake for the whole thing and it hurts like hell. I think they’re just trying to wind me up, but I can’t tell. But, like, I’m trying not to think too much of that. I’ll get to go home, is the important thing. And let’s have dinner out. I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to have lamb. We never get lamb here. I love you. I can’t wait.

***

_Vegard sat huddled against the headboard of his bed. He was wearing jogging pants and a t-shirt, and his knees were drawn up in front of him. The hand that wasn't holding the skrib was over his face, and he was peering out through his fingers. He blinked rapidly a few times, and then let out a whimper and hunched forward._

***

_Now his face was stubbled. One leg was splayed out, the other bent in front of him. His free hand covered his eyes. He kept moving to take the hand away, and giving the skrib sidewise glances. Then he shook his head a little._

***

_He was clean-shaven again, lying down. He glanced at the skrib in his hand for a moment and then winced away. His face crumpled, and his shoulders shook with sobs._

***

_There were eight of these. The ninth showed him propped up on pillows, blue-jawed, hollow-eyed, staring at the ceiling. Then he opened his mouth and said,_

Oh god, oh god, it hurts. It hurts so much. I don’t think I can do this. I think I made a mistake. I can’t do this. I’m sorry. Oh god. If they ask, tell them I can’t, I can’t, I’m sorry. Oh god. Oh hell. I’m sorry.

***

Okay. Trying to get it together. Because...if I can’t get it together, then it will have been for nothing. I will have given everything up for nothing. Oh god. You wouldn’t believe how much this hurts.

They... they told me they were just calibrating their instruments, and told me to flex for them, and it was like they took the hand I gave them and ripped my arm out of its socket. I can’t even describe the pain. 

I think I made a mistake. I don’t know if I can do this. I’m just going to try. It hurts so much. I’m not even sure it’s getting better. It’s been four days. I don’t know if it’s going to get better. 

And Finn was... Finn was... I guess he found out and I can see you not being able to keep him away, but you'd better be protecting him, Bård. Because I can't. 

I’m so scared. I’m really scared. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t know how I can.

***

I’ve been thinking. Lying here thinking. Now I’m actually kind of happy about this summer. I think if I didn’t have this summer, if I hadn't already had to slow down, I would be in an even worse mindset than I am right now. I would be scared you’d leave me, Helene. I wouldn’t know if I could get through it. I still don’t _know_ know, but I did it once before, and if I didn’t have that I think I would be a thousand times more scared right now.

***

Bård, you were by today, and I... I don’t even know what I said. I was tired, and in pain, and in my own head I sounded really cranky. I think I might have been mean. So whatever I said, I am sorry. It was really good to see you. Like... like putting on an old pair of comfy slippers, right? You make me think I can get better. You make it easy to, to try to be who I was before all this started. You make me think there might be something on the other side of this. Jesus, I hope so.

***

Haha. Scratch what I said last time. About coming back? I’m not coming back. Not until they find a way to fix this. My, uh... Oh, god, I’m sorry, I thought I was done but I just cry about anything these days and I’m tired and still kind of...

Sorry.

So... my music is gone. There it is. Finished. I guess... it makes sense, because music is how I _made_ the magic. I thought there were some things that just hurt really a lot, and they’d come back when, you know, when things healed up a bit. But, ah... it’s just... there’s nothing. I sit down at a piano and just... my fingers know what to do. Well, not fingers. It’s really the cerebellum and the basal ganglia that hold what we call muscle memory. That all works fine, and I can watch myself play like I always played... but there’s no _me_ in it. Then I tried with my voice, to see if that made a difference, and I sound terrible. I can’t even describe it. 

It’s now that I really, truly regret this. If I had known this would happen... but I can’t back out now. Obviously. 

Now I wonder how much of the rest of me is gone. Like, if I’m still funny. I keep trying to think of funny things, and I’m having trouble. But that could just be my mindset, right? I’m all stressed. I’m scared. Trying to be funny to see if I’m still funny is like trying not to think of a white elephant. Which to be honest I manage, most of the time. 

Oh! Oh good. Okay. But I still want my music back.

***

I sleep and sleep. It's ridiculous. But I think the pain is getting to be less. I've still got this big raw hole in my mind, but the edges are healing over. I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. Everything is gone.

***

I had to scare away a doctor today. Bård, when you see this--I’m sorry. The examination hurt, yeah, but it didn’t hurt half as much as I pretended it did. It would have been nice if she could have given me some kind of relief, but to let her mess with the spells or even look at them might have blown my cover, and besides, it could even be putting her in danger. Mab said I should assume I’m being watched very, very carefully. So I just, I just screamed. And I hope she didn’t see very much. It would have been so nice, though... to get some relief.

***

You won’t believe how much I needed that. Okay, so... here’s what happened. Christmas Eve and Christmas were okay, better than I thought they would be, and I guess I got overconfident. The next day I went, Okay, I’m going to get my life back. I went to my studio and sat down with the keyboard on my lap and tried to think of a new melody, just put one together. It shouldn’t be that hard, right? But I couldn’t, even though I pushed. I worked at it. I went to that raw place in my mind, and just sat there and tried to relax and think of something.

Well, I dozed off. When I woke up... I must have stretched something, or... I don’t know. It hurt. Maybe worse than it had at first. And I mean, I’m okay now, I’m really okay. But I was sitting there at the time, curled up on the carpet in the studio in so much pain, and just realizing my music is really gone, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t even know if I can get my old life back. And it was like, what am I even doing here? I’m lost, I’m broken, what’s the point? And then there was an eight-legged horse in my room, and Brynjar was telling me to hop on. 

"I’ll be okay," I said. "I’m just... in kind of a bad place right now."

Sleipnir knelt and Brynjar dismounted. Both sides of him worked again, and it was such a relief. Mab had at least been right about him escaping. That made me so happy. He put his arms around me and lifted me to my feet. His hands on my shoulders burned my mind, but it was a burn like a chili pepper, not like a cheese grater. "Then we will taking you to a better one," he said.

I couldn't even open my eyes all the way. "I don’t need a god," I said.

"No, but you do needs a friend." He put me on Sleipnir’s back, and crawled up behind me. "Closing your eyes," he said. "I does not know what the sight of the old roads will do to you."

He took me to Asgard. I was kind of not smart. I peeked. But it wasn’t so bad. One thing about Bifrost, though... there’s this one bright bit at the end, too bright to look at. Going through that with your mind all raw is like, I don’t know, Helene, you remember that winter at the cabin that you surprised me in bathroom and mouthwash came out my nose and then we stepped outside and it was minus ten and I was like _huuuuuwwwuuuuuunnnnnngggggghhhhhh_? Kind of like that. But that part, even though it was really intense, it didn’t hurt. It might even have cauterized something that was open, or maybe I was just maxed out already. I don’t know. The pain felt duller after that. 

Sleipnir stopped in front of Valaskjolf. One of the big doors opened up and the animals, the wolves and the ravens that used to belong to Odin, came out and up to me. And Fenrir too, from the other side, bounding over a hill. I was a little scared, and I’m sorry, a little philosophical too, but Brynjar just paused. Fenrir skidded to a halt a few feet shy of me, and made a sad little noise, and howled, once. Then he whimpered and pushed his nose into my neck. He pulled back, and cocked his head, and he looked so doggy that I reached out and scratched his muzzle, without thinking that he might take off my hand at any moment. He closed his eyes, and wagged his tail. Then I realized: at first he’d thought I was Finn. Until he smelled me, he thought that someone had hurt Finn. It was nice. I mean, I know what he thinks most of the time, and it’s nice that he’s got people who will look at me and go, "Oh. Vegard. Well, I guess you’ll do."

Brynjar has Valaskjolf all decked out as his bachelor pad. I don't know where he got the furniture.

I was pretty useless for the first little while. Brynjar brought me in and wrapped a blanket around me, and sat me down on the comfy chair in front of the hearth with the TV over it. He brought me mead and chocolates, and let me eat all the raspberry creams. I’ve been trying to be really careful about drinking since all this, because I worry that I won’t be able to keep my mouth shut and that I won’t be able to stop, but he kept telling me, "It’s okay, you’re safe here. I are here." So I got pretty drunk. I don’t remember what I said to him, but I’m pretty sure it’s all stuff he knew already. We played video games. I think he kept losing on purpose.

Time doesn’t really go in Asgard. I mean, it moves on in the rest of the world, outside, but there you sort of lose track. Bård, you know how it is. I ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired. Sleipnir wove me a hammock in the corner. I don’t know how long I slept, that first time, but it was a good sleep. Maybe the first good sleep I’ve had since the arrest.

We had a picnic in the forest. You didn’t see the forest, Bård. It’s mostly pine and spruce, but there’s birch and aspen and hazel and oak and elm and alder. And ash, of course. Kind of the same composition as Bergen, except I’ve never seen it rain in Asgard.

Brynjar said, "Will you lets me look?" And I didn’t see the harm in just letting him look, when he can see everything already, so I said yes. Then he said, "You will not lets me fix." I don’t want a god to fix things for me, and I don’t want to jeopardize the queen’s operations, but I think if he had made it a question, in that moment I might have given him permission. I think maybe that’s why he didn’t make it a question. So I just shook my head a little. 

I fell asleep against a tree. I woke up with a very large, very wet cold nose nuzzling my neck. Fenrir licked my head a bunch of times. I was really gross by the end of it. Then he put his head across my lap and I reached up and scratched behind his one ear where I could reach, and we just sat like that for a long time. Then I went swimming and dunked my head in the river. 

All of the animals were unbelievably nice to me. Even Huginn--I don’t know if he forgave me or just felt sorry for me, or maybe since I wasn’t getting the benefit of sharing his eyes with you, he stopped being angry about it. He sat on my shoulder and nibbled my hair. I got the idea that he was trying to tell me things, but whatever I could understand him with got ripped out with the rest of it. 

When we went back to the hall, Fenrir came with us, and he lay down by the fire, and Brynjar and I sat with our backs against him like a big furry couch. There was something on the TV, something with a lot of explosions, but I don't remember a single other thing about it. Brynjar said, "I are not going to say I know exactly what thou goest through, but I remember what it were like to has such wounds, such incapacities. To wait for them to heal, knowinging that to push may hurt more, fearing that there will be no improvementation, or seeing it and asking every time, are this it? Are this as good as things getting? Can I lives like this if I has to?"

I thought of him huddled up in the chair in my studio. He knew what he was talking about. Then I thought about the way Finn had helped him get dressed like they both knew the drill, and the way he mopped up the tea dribbling out the side of his mouth as if he couldn’t feel it but he knew it was going to be there, and I realized, he’d known before, too. When I met him, he was Brynjar Kvam, with a weird way of speaking and one grey eye that sees weird things and a bit of a limp when he gets tired. I knew he’d gotten an ash slat through his head. But I never thought of him right after the accident. I never thought of what it would have been like for him. "What did you do?" I asked.

"I waited," he said. "I learned to push a little, and not a lot. To listen to my brain."

It was a man’s answer, and not a god’s. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t make me feel better. It helped. 

I woke up screaming. First because in the nightmare, I was being chased by something and I tried to use my magic and it wasn’t there, and then because, well, I tried to use my magic. I heard Fenrir whimper and shift under me. Then Brynjar was kneeling in front of me, grabbing my shoulders. He sleeps in flannel pyjama bottoms with, like, pictures of vegetables on them. Tears were streaming from his grey eye. 

"I don’t need a god," I said. My voice shook embarrassingly much.

"No, no," he agreed. "Just a friend. Hush, now, hush. Just a friend."

I didn’t mean to be mean. I was just saying what came into my head, because it felt so empty in there. "I need my brother."

He smiled a crooked smile. "For the moment you has the knockoff. It are slightly imperfect, but with extra features."

I realized, then, what I was saying. "I’m sorry."

He put his hand on my head. It was kind of tender, but it didn’t hurt. "In this allow me to be a god, Vegard: you has no power to hurt me."

That was hard to argue with. And oddly comforting. He sat with me, and I kept thinking any minute now I was going to get up and go to my hammock so he could go back to bed, but the sound of Fenrir’s breathing lulled me back to sleep. All my dreams were silly harmless things.

***

I don’t know how many days it was, but I’d slept in the hammock twice when Brynjar asked me if I wanted to go moose hunting with him. The idea of hurting anything made me really tired, but it’s not like I’ve stopped eating meat. Plus I knew if I said no, he would just stay home, and I know he loves it so I said okay. He jumped up and went into one of the side rooms, and when he was back, he was wearing ratty old clothes and a belt with a hunting knife and his hair was tied back. We walked off, without any other equipment, down the hill that Valaskjolf is on and into the forest.

I would have expected them to be around at twilight, but there’s no twilight in Asgard. We just went, and Brynjar followed their tracks and traces through gullies, up hills... I guess he could have seen them with his eye, but he kept both eyes very resolutely on the ground, except when he was looking back to see how I was. 

And I was fine. My mind might be broken, but my body was really happy to be up and moving around. And Asgard really is beautiful, and the air smelled really good, and at one point--we were on top of a rise, looking out over Asgard, and I saw all the way to the sea, and mountains in the distance higher than any I’d ever seen before--I realized that my pain was a zero. My mind didn’t hurt anymore, and I knew it wouldn’t be too much in either direction to make it hurt, but just for that moment it was okay. 

Brynjar put a hand on my shoulder. I felt a bit sensitive, but not bad. I started to laugh. "I want to burst into song," I told him sadly.

"Not a best idea," he cautioned. "Come; we will go down, and I will singing."

It had been smooth going up, but going down was a bit steep. Not impossible, and we didn’t need equipment or anything, but it was craggy and we had to concentrate and work together. 

At the bottom the land was really marshy, and it gave way to a small lake. There was an island in the middle, with earthworks and ruins on top. I meant to ask about it, but Brynjar was a bit ahead of me and I just made a mental note to ask when I caught up to him, and never did. We walked about a quarter of the way around the lake, to where there was a little beach. There were three big stones there, and Brynjar sat on one of the small ones and propped his stick up, and motioned for me to sit on the other small one. 

Then he closed his eyes, and started to sing. The song wasn’t in any language I knew, even though I felt like I ought to know it, like it was one that I had learned a long time ago and forgotten. It was really... it... it made me feel like... Anyway. It’s probably a good thing I’d lost my music, because if I could remember that song, if I could _duplicate_ that song, I could create some serious mayhem.

So we were sitting there, and suddenly I flashed back on the time near Vigmostad where Brynjar was supposed to be getting dinner and instead he was just sitting there. And I knew exactly what was going to happen now.

First I heard something huge moving through the bush, and then the moose broke through. I know how big they get, but it was still a shock. It was a young bull, with scars on its nose and one broken antler. I thought about how dangerous it could be, but Brynjar wasn’t fazed, so I waited. 

The moose went to its haunches in front of us, and put its nose to the ground. It looked for all the world like it was prostrating itself in front of Brynjar. Brynjar nodded, once, and the moose got to its feet and walked to him. It laid its head on his knees, and looked up at him like 2005YU55 looks at us on steak night. With one eye, though, because you know how moose eyes are arranged. They’re on the sides of the head, so that they can look back and see if anything’s chasing them. And Brynjar turned his head so that he was looking at the moose with the grey eye, and he petted its head and nose and ears, and scratched the back of its neck. 

"Vegard, this are Ensom," Brynjar murmured. "Come, say hello."

I slipped off the stone, and one of the enormous brown eyes shifted over to me. I petted Ensom’s head, and scratched the huge back, and rubbed his chin, and he narrowed his eyes and made a sound deep in his throat. 

It seemed like we’d been like that forever, playing with this young moose like it was an old dog, when I saw Brynjar slip his hunting knife out of its sheath. 

I caught Brynjar’s eye--the blue one--and held the thought in my head. _Does he know?_

Brynjar nodded, and handed me the knife, handle first. "Wash this," he said softly. "Bless the blade."

With a couple of final pats I got up from my spot next to Ensom, and washed the knife in the lake. The handle was made of bone, and the carvings looked very old. I thought, _Brynjar, I have no magic._

Brynjar’s voice was quiet behind me. "I hath magic enough."

I kissed the blade. Telling it to do no harm didn’t really make a lot of sense, so I said, "I conjure thee to do no ill."

I handed the blade back to Brynjar. He’d put his knees up to raise Ensom’s head, and he had his arms around the moose’s neck and his cheek resting against Ensom’s muzzle. Then he raised his head, and took Ensom’s massive head in his arms and kissed his forehead, and the grey eye looked deep into Ensom’s one eye, and even though my heart was hammering in my chest and I felt sick to my stomach I made myself look in Ensom’s other eye, a little because I thought it would be cowardly to look away and a little because it kept me from having to see exactly what Brynjar did. So I stroked Ensom’s head, and as the light went out of that big brown eye I thought about the time Brynjar had kissed the top of _my_ head and looked into _my_ eyes.

"Steady, Vegard," Brynjar said. "I has done nothing not agreed to."

"Do you enjoy this?" I demanded, hazarding a look at what he was doing and regretting it immediately. 

"Not this part," he admitted. "This part are messy. But the rest I enjoy very much. Are it wrong, Vegard? Thinkest you, truly, that it would be righter if Ensom died unwillingly, in pain and afraid?"

"I guess not." 

The wolves joined us half an hour later. They got the guts and the bones and most of the rest of the carcass. Brynjar wound a cord around the four legs and gave them to me to sling over my shoulder. He wrapped the rest of the meat up in the hide and carried it on his back.

By the time we got back to Valaskjolf, I was sore and exhausted and maxed out. Ensom was stuck in my thoughts like a splinter. While Brynjar put the meat away, I had a good wash in the stream, and then I went in and went to bed. I thought I’d have nightmares, but... it wasn’t bad. I dreamed of Brynjar’s song. In the dream I understood the words, and they were laws of physics. Like, E=mc2, and all is well. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, and all is well. The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease, and all is well. 

My music was gone and I was an atheist in realm of the gods and my shoulders ached from carrying a corpse of a creature whose name I’d known. And all was well.

When I woke up, we had a massive breakfast. I asked Brynjar about the magic that had made a whole feast appear before our eyes when Odin waved his hand. He said the table had a translation, um, sort of a shortcut magicked in between it and a stasis point. The food doesn’t come out of thin air; it gets made ahead of time and shoved into the stasis point and you can translate it to the table exactly the way it was when it was prepared. The Bright Court must have filled it up for Odin. It still has stuff in it, but Brynjar’s been picking away, so now it’s down to the gross stuff like sheep’s brains and Brussels sprouts, plus whatever leftovers he puts in there. But he just cooked breakfast from scratch.

And when we were done Brynjar called Sleipnir. Before we got on the old roads, I begged a stop in Varggrav, to pick up a case of hardeblomster, because I mean when else am I ever going to get up here? Because of the way Varggrav is laid out, the store was in not too nice of an area. I got recognized. The shopkeeper’s eyes got really big, and she asked if I was okay, and I said, "I am. I really am." The way her face lit up was just the best. I had to turn away in a hurry because I was tearing up. 

Anyway, so that’s where I was and what I was doing, and that’s how I came back with hardeblomster--I can’t believe you don’t like them--and moose steaks and ground moose and two of the legs. And--well, you saw. It didn’t hurt to hug you. It didn’t hurt to have the kids all pile on me. So, respect to Brynjar Kvam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Chris Squire's "Safe" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2WYvryNoZM


	25. In Her Infernal Majesty's Secret Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiff / The advantage / Hiatus: Reprise / The holy grail: Reprise / A day trip to Brandbu / Points south / Signing off

I just had a conversation with Mab. She skribbed me. I wasn’t very nice. Well, it’s been a bad day. I’m still learning what hurts and what doesn’t, and trying to follow a conversation with music playing in the background? _Hurts._ Badly enough at the time, and worse afterward, so I was very grumpy when she called. I looked up at her, and saw one of the people who had taken my life away from me. 

"How are you?" she said.

"It bloody hurts," I snapped. "They took more than I thought they would. I said I’m in, so I’m still in, but I don’t know what use I could possibly be to you like this. What use I could be to anyone."

She looked at me sharply, which made me annoyed. When someone has part of their soul ripped out for you, it’s not fair to look at them like that. "You had someone else in there."

"My cousin. He's sort of my cousin. Bård's changeling. The one we talked about."

"How much does he know?" she demanded. 

"Everything. I mean... not just everything about this. I didn’t tell him a thing. He's got this eye. It sees everything." I leaned forward. "And you are not taking it, and you are not closing it off."

"Can he keep a secret?"

"I trust him," I said.

"Hm," she said. "He didn’t do anything to the spells."

"I asked him not to."

She raised her eyebrows. Then she said, "I just wanted to give you an update on the traces. They’re nearing completion. We’re getting a basic idea of... the shape of what we’re up against."

"So I’m close to getting everything back?"

She made a face. "Our preliminary results suggest it might be a little more complicated."

"You said I’d get everything back! My _music_ is gone!"

"Oh," she said. Like this was new information that didn’t particularly surprise her. "We’re doing everything we can, Vegard."

"I thought the whole point of asking _me_ was that it wasn’t going to disrupt my life."

For a moment she looked really angry, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing. Then her face smoothed out and she said, "I understand that you’re upset, and you have every right to be, so I will do you the courtesy of _not_ showing you the consequences extraction has had for other people. But the next time you get feeling sorry for yourself, I suggest that you look them up. We are doing everything we can. I’ll contact you when we have another update."

Later on, when I’d cooled off, I went and looked them up on the Wild Hunt. If I had known before, if I had seen those things before... But done is done. I can’t change it. I just have to hope I give them information they can use.

***

Okay. Well. It seems weird to be actually thinking about this. Saying it. I got another summons today, and, uh... haha... wow.

Well, first of all, they finished the trace, and Mab was right: I’ve got a low-grade, super-secure, heavily concealed collection spell on me. She says they didn’t even really rip anything out, so that part is very good. I think. They just punched a hole and affixed the spell, and let the spell pull out my magic. And the way it’s fitted assumes I had a lot more magic than I ever did, so it’s pulling out my music too. My mind keeps trying to heal it up, and the spell just sucks up whatever energy gets put towards that. It’s really just a trickle, but they were able to trace it partway. Which is a big victory... kind of. 

"Does that mean I can get it back soon?" I asked her. As soon as I’d seen her calling, I had gone for the closest private room. It was my studio, which I can’t even stand to go into anymore. The air was cool and it smelled like electronics. I sat on my computer chair and propped the skrib up against one of the slide switches and tried not to let it bother me that I couldn't use it the mixer for what I bought it for. "I don’t care about the magic so much, but I need the music."

"We’re working on it," she said. "I might have another job for you, though."

I made a face at her. "Considering what happened last time..."

She gave me a smile. "Understood. Believe me, you weren’t my first choice to ask about this, but my other choices are dead."

" _Huh?_ "

"We traced the spell to an anchor-web, which is very clever of them, in terms of both stability and stealth," she said. 

And I guess I should probably explain to you what that is, especially to Bård, because this could be important. An anchor-web is like a joint between two kinds of spells, and it’s got, like, between sixteen and thirty-two different, separate spells anchoring it. It’s hard to make, you have to weave every anchor separately and each one takes at least a month, but you can have, say, a really stable spell on one side, and then one or more or as many as you want really _unstable_ spells on the other side, and if one of the unstable spells goes then the whole thing doesn’t collapse, because it’s anchored at all these points. The other thing it does is cover up the spell on the other side absolutely, so you can’t even tell what kind of spell the other spells are feeding into. But I mean, Mab thinks she knows, because that’s exactly what you would do if you just wanted to collect magic into a power sink. 

"But you can’t see the power sink," I said, "so you don’t know where exactly my magic is going to."

"Exactly," she said. "But anchor webs themselves don’t break any laws, and so far the evidence I’ve been able to give the dálki isn’t enough for them to investigate. We have to break it ourselves."

"Which I don’t imagine they’ll let you do."

She made a face. "Now that we know where to look and what to look for," she said, "we’ve been finding the anchors. They’re placed in areas where they’re hard to detect, but the magical signatures are utterly generic, there are no marks of ownership of any sort, and none of them are guarded. And alas, now we know why."

"Why?" I asked.

"They don’t need to be. They’re ungrounded, and why _that’s_ not illegal I will never understand. Three times, I’ve sent agents in. Three times, they’ve found the anchor points unguarded, and released the spell. And three times, the freed magic went flooding through them and just... fried them."

"Fried them," I echoed with a little shudder.

"Well... one was just fried. One was inside out. The one who had the presence of mind to record things turned into a butterfly, and _then_ he fried."

I thought I saw where this was going. "So you want me to be number four?" I demanded. "What, now that my magic is gone I’m totally expendable?"

"Not quite," she said. "But as we discussed when we met, I’ve heard from a few people about your extraordinary control. If I handed you a set of transfer glyphs and a small power reservoir, would you still know how to go through the motions of using them to trigger a release spell?"

I shrugged. "Sure, but I’m not going on any suicide mission. I’ve got my family and my... well, some of my work."

"The thing is, Vegard, for you it _wouldn’t_ be a suicide mission. They tore out your receptors and then some, and keep sucking away anything that would help you grow new ones. The freed magic can’t get to you, any more than it could get to an ordinary human being. But you remember magic. You remember the motions. If someone gives you the tools and lends you the power, you can still do it, and you are immune to the effects."

"What if you’re wrong?" I demanded.

She rose from her chair and made throwing motion with her hands. The skrib flared bright blue, almost white. I blinked and flinched away, and then turned back to her. "There," she said with a shrug. "If you had receptors, you’d be on the floor right now."

"And if you’re right about me being able to do this," I said, "I get my old life back."

She nodded, but then looked like she’d changed her mind. "It’s a step," she said. "We need the anchor spells broken, all of them. And then we need the power sink tapped and drained, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. All I can promise is that it’s a step." 

I closed my eyes and thought about it. "I know I should want to do the right thing," I sighed, putting my head back against the chair, "but I just don’t have the energy anymore. But I do want my music. I want it so badly it burns. I need a couple of days to think about this though. I want to talk to... people."

***

Believe it or not, I was probably going to tell her no. No. I’ve lost too much. I’ve still got you, and the kids, and my brothers, and Mom and Dad, and all my friends, and my pilot’s license, and my dream job. Sometimes I go hours without thinking about the pain, and I think eventually I’ll just get used to it completely. But then Bård goes and... Well no, that’s not right, Bård, I know you weren’t letting me go. Considering what you think is going on, you were pretty good about it. I just wanted so much to tell you. I don’t want to lie to you, but I can’t tell you the truth yet. I don’t know what I can say to make you stop worrying, and when I told Mab about it she said maybe it’s better that you do worry, so no one suspects anything. And if you’re watching this, now you know what was really happening. Be angry at me, but don’t be too hard on yourself, okay? You’re a good brother, and the best colleague. I lucked out. I hope I’m still lucky enough that when I do need you I _can_ call, and you won’t hate me too much.

Anyway, I know my job is like _one_ thing in that very long list of things I have to be grateful for, and I didn’t even lose it properly, but what am I supposed to do now? Right? I don’t want to say no and then have to wait around for someone else to get my music back for me. And no one should ever go through what I went through, and I had it _easy_. I’m doing it. I’m in.

***

Whew! Okay. Not dead. That's a good thing.

Mab told me to go to a little shop in Ekeberg and ask for a carton of cigarettes. Ondehage. I told her I don’t smoke, but she said they weren’t actual cigarettes. I didn’t really want to, because what if someone sees? I don’t think that she fully appreciates, humans _know_ me. So I went, and I said to the woman behind the counter it was for Calle. Then I went to my studio and opened up the box, and found two pads of preloaded transfer glyphs. From working with Caitriona I knew that one pad was assorted things like glamours and interference spells and little useful things. The other pad was glyphs that release the anchor spells, all identical. And there was a little jar of magic in a charged suspension. See, so what you do is, you add the tiniest dab of magic to the preloaded transfer glyph, _while_ you hold your mind just so, because even if you can’t feel the magic anymore, you're still making the space for the magic to work, and by holding your mind just so you can direct it. One thing that helps is, I discovered if I have my contacts in, I can see it.

She had told me it was at a church. From the list her people have put together over the past few months, it looks like all of the anchor points are in places, like, not just holy places, but places that people have believed in for a long time, because enough belief makes noise. Anchor points take a lot of energy, and that would show up if you were looking for magic, but not if everything else is screaming magic at you too. 

I practiced by taking out the camera. That wasn’t much trouble at all. I did, like, the littlest witchlight, because any magic will set up interference. It felt kind of achy and sickish to do it, but it worked, and that was really good. It was a good feeling, to know I still could.

I could have used an unlock spell from the pad, but I still remember how to pick a padlock, and I didn’t want to waste spells. 

The anchor was a silver cup. They told me that already, but with my contacts I could see it, too. Like, belief is gold, but the anchor spell is blue. I set up the release spell and triggered it. Um... It hurt really really badly. The pain just washed over me. Not as bad as the extraction, but around kidney stone level. But that was only for a moment. And it worked. I saw a blue flash with my contacts, but I didn’t die. I let myself out and went home. Mission accomplished. Now I’m going to bed.

***

I told Mab it went okay. She asked me if I’d be willing to do more, and I said, sure. There are a few more anchors within easy reach. Well, even fewer, now. She gave me a list.

There was an anchor in Brandbu. It had been at a stone circle, but when the agent the Queen sent in got turned inside out, they moved the replacement to somewhere I bet they think was more secure. It would be, for nearly anyone but me. I wore a hoodie and my glasses and took the bus out, and got to see our old friend Jan P. Krogh. He kidded me about kicking us out, but he was really very nice. 

I told him I wanted to see Sandman Issue 1. He wasn’t that interested in it himself, but I could tell that he was trying to, like, muster some enthusiasm because he thought I was interested? I wasn’t, to begin with, but I opened it up and looked through it with the gloves that he gave me. I had to wait a little while for someone else to need his help, and for him to leave me alone for a little while, before I could break the spell. While I was reading it I did get interested in the story, and when he went away it was a little hard to pull myself away and do the magic. But I thought, I can finish it later. Except I couldn’t. I was still recovering when he got back, and I had to tell him that I didn’t feel at all well for a moment but I was sure it would pass, and he said, "Oh, we’d better get this away from you, then." He sealed it back up and put it behind glass again. 

I ended up buying volume one of the set from his shop, and that made me feel better, that I hadn’t just lied my way in and he got nothing out of it. And I got some buttons for Bård.

On the way back, I had the bus drop me at Dynna. There’s not much there, just some farms and fields. I walked out according to the instructions that Mab gave me, and found, in the middle of a farmer’s field, a little built-up hill. Dynna Barrow. I slipped my glasses off and put one contact lens in. There was a small stone, laid on top, that I was supposed to go for, and I could see it now. For awhile I made like I was taking pictures with my phone. Then I did the magic. I was getting used to the pain, but it still makes you kind of tired. I pretended like I tripped, and rested a minute while I was on the ground. Then I picked up the paper with the drained spell on it, and put it in my pocket. I didn’t want anyone to find it and know what happened, because if they know they can redo it. It would take a lot of time, but it’s better if they just don’t know. Also, I didn’t want to litter. 

I don’t think this anchor web is from the Peace Division, though. I was thinking about it all the way back. They’re not, I don’t _like_ them, but they wouldn’t do this. Put out something deadly, and trust its deadliness to keep people from messing with it. It’s not very safe or very smart. Okay, and I know that’s never stopped them before, but also they like to throw their weight around, so if they did this the anchors wouldn’t be unmarked; they’d have their official seal all over them, and they’d probably be in official places where people can keep an eye on them. And they answer to the Samkoma, and the Samkoma would never go for this. And I think whoever would do this doesn’t have to answer to anyone.

***

The good news is, I’ve broken all the anchor spells around Oslo. Singlehandedly. And I lived.

Yesterday, in the morning I took the train out to Notodden. I walked out to Semhaugen Barrow. There was another anchor there, on top of the big barrow. It was a piece of oak at the base of the tree on top. I could see it glowing blue through the dirt and the snow. It was a little uncomfortable, because there's a house right there and it looked like it was on someone's property, but it's not very covert to knock on someone's door and ask if you can cast spells in their yard, so I just tried to be quiet. But when I defused the anchor and the pain came, I tried to lean against the tree, and missed, and a woman came out and wanted to know if I was all right. She made me come in and have tea and two slices of brittatårta. Well, she made me have one slice. The second might have been voluntary. I told her I was taking pictures, and she seemed to believe me.

Then on the way back I stopped in Kongsberg and rented a bike, and biked out to Evju. Not the town, that confused me a lot on the train when I was plotting it out on the map, but the barrow cemetery, which is in the complete opposite direction. It took me like two hours to find the anchor. There are eight barrows and it's in the middle of a bloody forest. It was a rock. Then I stopped at the restaurant there, and after I biked back and returned the bike, I took the train to Drammen. I was glad I'd left that for last, because I was tired, and it was the easiest to get to. Just a bus to the Skogerveien Carvings. The hard part of that was waiting until no one was around. Eventually I gave up and didn't try to hide it, I just did it like we usually do, like this is a perfectly normal thing that people do over Stone-Age carvings. But they were really interesting. They're at least six thousand years old. There's moose, and a whale, and a bird, and lots of fish. The anchor was one of the fish. I'm not sure how they did that. I took a lot of pictures with my phone, and then I realized probably it would be bad to keep any record that I'd been there, so I erased them all. So those are done, and that's good news.

The, I don’t know if it’s bad news, but, but... Mab asked if I would do more.

They’ll outfit me. She said if I say yes, she knows an elf in Bergen who’s an absolute genius at glamour. I think she means Kai. That would be really nice. It would be good to see Kai and Chuck and Maddy. And Mama and Papa. There are anchors around Bergen, too. They’ve got a full list of the anchors now. Thirty-two of them, which is the maximum, and we know there’s not more because more actually make it less stable.

They tried to train more people who've had extractions to do what I’m doing, but most of them don't want to, because they've had magic all their lives and they don't do very well without it. I don't blame them. There was a guy named Kjetil, not flight simulator Kjetil but a svartalfr I never met, a doctor who got busted for healing his patients like Dr. Torden healed me. He went through the drills like I did. He really wanted his magic back like I did. He was doing the one in Eina, but he never came back, and the queen’s people found what was left of him bristling with elfshot, and the anchor point untouched. That’s got to be one of the last sites we do now, because it will probably be watched.

I don’t know. I’d have to do this twenty-six more times. If I say yes. I'd have to hurry. Partly before they notice, because if they put guards on these my job would get a lot harder. And partly before they have time to make new anchor points, which takes about a month. I've done six, and the people who died before me did three, total, but those are replaced now. So even if I had, like, only a five percent chance of dying each time, those odds still add up to more than a hundred percent, don’t they? And the odds are a lot worse than five percent. Statistically speaking, at some point my luck is going to run out. But there’s the smallest chance that I could get everything back, too. Or I could just sit at home feeling sorry for myself. 

I guess I could, like, apply to Norwegian Airlines or something. "Hi, Mr. Kjus, great interview last year. Thanks for letting us be jerks to you in our video. Fancy giving me a job?" Let this be someone else’s problem.

You know I’ve already decided, right? If you really don’t want me to, I’ll stay, and I’ll be relieved, because it’s not like there’s nothing to lose. I’ve got a lot to lose, a lot, and it’s really irresponsible really. But I think, for myself, I think I’ve decided to go.

***

All right. Flight’s booked, but it’s the last time I can get away with travelling by plane. They mustn’t be able to track me. I’ve got supplies and another list of anchors waiting for me in Bergen. Not a full list--I'd never remember them all, and it would be dangerous for me to be caught with any record of it all at once--but I’m bringing along the skrib I’ve used to contact Mab, so can get more later. If... everything goes well. If nothing happens.

This is the last entry I’ll be making on this skrib. I’m going to leave it here. Helene, if anything happens to me... everything’s in order. I’ll do my best to be in touch when I can, but don’t be alarmed if you don’t hear from me. I promise I’ll be careful. 

Bård, if you’re watching this, it’s because I need your help. Don’t be afraid of the skrib. Well, now you know what would have happened if I’d let you touch it. They’re not addictive or any of the things you were thinking; it just... when I was at work, and hurting, going over this stuff helped remind me that this was my choice. That it had a purpose, that it wasn’t just a bad mistake I made. I guess that would have been good to say at the beginning, but back then I didn’t know I had to say it, and that’s why these aren’t in wide use anymore: there’s no way to edit. If you’re watching now, you know. I’m sorry for what I let you think, but it did keep you out of it this whole time. 

And that’s been good, because _somebody_ is watching us. Never mind how I know, but someone is, over and above that bloody web of theirs. Mab says they’re not traceable to the Peace Division, which fits what I think, but of course that might not mean anything. I’ll call you when I need you, and I’ll be waiting for you, and I hope you don’t hate me too much.

Helene. I can’t say it’s going to be safe. But if I do this, if we win, I could get my music back. And even if I don’t get it back, this is the right thing to do, and I’ll do my best and come home and be a pilot or something. But I have to try. It’s okay. Brynjar will be looking out for me; we had a little chat after my last nightmare, and he says of course. Well, he says "Of courses." And if I need Bård, remember, the code word is _pamplemousse_. I love you so much. I’ll turn this off and tell you face to face when I hand it to you, but I want it on record too, so you can always hear me saying it no matter what else happens: I love you unbelievably much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: KMFDM's "Anarchy" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAOoiIkFQq4 (Content warning for sex worker-phobic language; also, reading the comments is strongly discouraged.)


	26. The Cavalry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty-five new messages / "Go fix all of this." / Bård looks for the toothpaste / Choose your adventure / Off course

The picture collapsed all at once, lines of blue light cascading down to the floor. Bård closed his fingers around the skrib, biting one knuckle thoughtfully as the world rearranged itself around him. He felt light and elated and guilty and frightened and stuffed with pride at his big brother, all at once. 

His phone made a noise at him. There was a text from ∞∞ ∞∞∞∞∞. Nonsense, but not Brynjar's usual type of nonsense. It was a string of letters and numbers. As he was puzzling over it, another one came in. This was one word: "Faebook."

Brynjar booted up his Mac, logged out of his own Faebook account, and entered Vegard's e-mail address with the string as a password. It let him in. 

Vegard's last post was from three months ago. It was a video of someone carrying a giant stuffed purple gorilla down the street. It looked like he hadn’t logged on since the day before the arrest. There were a hundred and seven notifications. Bård scrolled through, and it was almost all birthdays, event invitations, and postings to groups. 

There were twenty-seven new messages. One was a smiley from Kai. One was a "k bye" from Kit. The other twenty-five were from Finn. Intrigued, Bård clicked, and scrolled up so that he could read through.

> \---
> 
> 17.11.2016 
> 
> 8.57
> 
> bad news pls call
> 
> \---
> 
> 9.35
> 
> V have you seen today's Alpha? Call ASAP
> 
> \---
> 
> 14.11
> 
> Melly said showing up in court would make it worse or I'd be there.
> 
> \---
> 
> 18.11.2016 
> 
> 00.44
> 
> Let me know if there's anything I can do k? I feel responsible for this.
> 
> \---
> 
> 10.17
> 
> Helene said u went to work. Call when u get home?
> 
> \---
> 
> 19.06
> 
> Hey it’s cool. You’ve got a lot on your plate right now. Let me know if either of us can help.
> 
> \---
> 
> 21.11.2016 
> 
> 17.24
> 
> Saw the papers. I am so sorry. I never wanted any of this to happen.
> 
> \---  
> 20.45
> 
> Er. I mean I am grateful beyond words tho. Just I never wanted you to get hurt.
> 
> \---
> 
> 22.02
> 
> Call me? Think I have an idea to keep you out of jail.
> 
> \---
> 
> 22.11.2016 
> 
> 00.18
> 
> V, I've been thinking. I could take your place in Innilokun R=%ki. I'm human now. Red blood and everything. I sliced my hand on a paring knife the other day. Look, I'll cut my hair. They'll never know the difference. It's the least I can do after what you did for me. I just want to ask one thing, please take care of Melantha and my little one and my orchard out back. 
> 
> \---
> 
> 02.24
> 
> V? Please let me know. I can do this for you. So you don't have to. Please let me.
> 
> \---
> 
> 24.11.2016
> 
> 01.33
> 
> I guess you won’t read this for a few months now. If you ever do. You’re probably angry, I get that, and I get why. I don’t want to pester you, but I did want to thank you for putting everything together for me the way you did. I was confused at first, but Bård is a big help. 
> 
> \---
> 
> 12.12.2016
> 
> 17.17
> 
> O gods V, I would take it all back if I could. I would go back in time and stop you. I would rather have winked out like a candle flame than see you do this for me. I love what I have now, but I hate what it ended up costing you. 
> 
> \---
> 
> 13.12.2016
> 
> 01.20
> 
> gods i'm sry so sry i h8 ths 4giv me id giv erything
> 
> \---
> 
> 09.54
> 
> PLEASE IGNORE ABOVE 
> 
> Bloody hell, sorry. So drunk last night. I don't guess you're up to communicating yet, but when you see this, please know I'm thinking of you. Lovingly and gratefully and soberly.
> 
> \---
> 
> 21.12.2016
> 
> 15.32
> 
> Hey, just wondered how you're doing 
> 
> \---
> 
> 02.01.2017
> 
> 11.04
> 
> Magnus texted me, which I thought was sweet. So happy you're back at work. 
> 
> \---
> 
> 04.01.2017
> 
> 12.13
> 
> Listen tho, i've still got your phone. I should get it back to you. I was thinking there's a cake place that just opened up on Heimdalsgate. It gets good reviews. We could meet there whenever you feel up to it. My treat.
> 
> \---
> 
> 07.01.2017
> 
> 07.52
> 
> Hey, Brynjar and I are headed over to the Tekniskmuseum today. If you and Bård wanna come with, let's meet at 11.00 by the doors.
> 
> \---
> 
> 10.01.2017
> 
> 14.13
> 
> I still have your phone. Plus I miss you.
> 
> \---
> 
> 13.01.2017
> 
> 11.22
> 
> Hey how 'bout coffee, 4:30, that little place in Marienlyst? 
> 
> \---
> 
> 11.27
> 
> It's weird, isn't it? We say it's coffee but then one person has hot chocolate and the other has tea or whatever and neither of us have coffee but it's still called coffee. Anyway, let me know. I can give you back your phone.
> 
> \---
> 
> 20.01.2017
> 
> 22.55
> 
> You there? Please say something. Even a healthy "screw you" would gladden my heart at this point. I'm worried about you, buddy.
> 
> \---
> 
> 21.01.2017
> 
> 07.16
> 
> I understand. You gave me this gift, and it just kept taking and taking and taking from you. I didn’t want it to. I would fix it if I knew how. I'm sorry V.
> 
> \---
> 
> 25.01.2017
> 
> 20.48
> 
> Dear Vegard,
> 
> Something the group has been telling me for awhile finally got through. I can't control how you feel, and I can't go back, and I can't blame myself for a decision that remember I did try to talk you out of. I finally understand that. What I can do is trust that you are the same kind, thoughtful, rational man you've always been, and you have reasons for your actions that might not even have anything to do with me. I can trust that I have done all I can with the information that I have, and if there is something more that you want me to do, you will tell me. And I can do what you told me at first: I can go and do my best to have a happy life. I'm sorry about all this, and if you think of anything I can do that will help, or if you ever need me for anything at all, I will be here, doing the best I can with the gift that you gave me. I will ALWAYS be grateful. 
> 
> Love always, man,
> 
> Finn.
> 
> \---

***

All of the messages had been new. Vegard hadn't read any of them. Bård clamped a hand to his mouth, deep in thought and a little chokey. He'd misread everything. "He packed a bag," he said softly.

He pocketed the skrib, and reeled down the stairs. Maria met him at the bottom. "Bård? You’re home early!"

"He packed a _bag_ , Maria. When I asked him to replace Vegard, he thought... "

"Who, Finn? He thought he was going to prison in Vegard’s place. I know."

Bård stopped short. "How did you know?"

She shrugged. "When he was doing the dishes New Year's Eve, we talked."

" _I_ didn't know."

"He gathered that. Eventually. I told him you and Vegard wouldn’t let him go to jail."

"Yeah," Bård said. "Of _course_ not. But listen, Maria. I just got news about Vegard. I’ve gotta go bail him out of something."

" _Again?_ " She grew very still. "For what this time?"

"Not jail, nothing like that. I... it’s a long story, but I was wrong. About everything, it turns out."

"Okay," she said. "Well, go fix it. Go fix all of this."

Bård wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her close, resting his chin in the crook of her neck. "Afterwards, we are going on a _vacation_."

"Hallelujah!" The vibration of her laughter against his jawbone was possibly the best feeling in the world. "It’s about time!"

***

He was in the bedroom, throwing together his own bag of essentials, when he realized that he had no idea where he was going. He thought briefly of driving to Vegard's place and trying to find a hairbrush, and then he realized there might be an easier way. "Brynjar," he said, a little embarrassed by how plaintive his voice sounded, and Kai’s phone, the untraceable one, rang. He answered it, and asked the other question that had been gnawing at him ever since the text had come in. "Was that real? Was our last conversation, the one on the beach, real?"

"Yes."

"I got it wrong. I’m sorry."

"As are I, Bård. Was there a way to tell you, I wouldst have. But your safety and his depended on you being convincifying as frantic brother Bård, looking for shattered Vegard; not patient brother Bård waiting on a signal from undercover Vegard."

"Well, I got the signal. Where do I find him?"

There was an uncomfortable silence on the other side of the phone.

"Brynjar?" Bård said more insistently. He fell still, a pair of boxers in one hand. He thought the combination of repeated shocks and months of attrition might have dulled his fear for Vegard, but it was honed to a fine point.

"There are no reason to assume the worst, Bård, but I cannot see him."

"What? Why?"

"I has a blind spot. It appeared--pardon, I first _noticed_ it after Finn restored me and liberized me from the spell feeding upon my godhead. These months I has assumed it to be an after-effect, but interrogating it I find that it are conveniently located at the centre of your brother’s peregrinations."

"You think someone’s got him and they’re hiding him from us?"

"It are possible, but more, I think when you thieve and store vast amounts of magic, it produces distortifications to those who can see."

Bård drew in a breath, packed the boxers and some socks, and moved to the bathroom. "Do you think... were you targeted on purpose? Do they go after gods too so that no one _does_ see?"

"It are a worthy question," Brynjar mused, "and I would be interested to examinate the motives of those who engineered this, but I sees them not, and those who are behind the distortion field are very likely behind the distortion field. I thinks Vegard is too."

"But he still got a message to Helene, obviously." Toothpaste, toothpaste... 

"Bottom drawer," Brynjar said. "The format were very odd, and it taked a week for... for me to decode."

"A _week?_ " Bård flew to his feet, kicking the drawer closed, and stalked out to the bedroom. "He’s needed help for a week?"

"As I said, his message wanted decoding. But I are confident of his livingness. Still, we must moving quickly, not for only his sake, not only because the first reweavings are mere days from fruition, but because the chancifications are good that our current conversation hath triggered the security web. Pack what things are needful and notificate your colleagues that Bård Ylvisåker are taking some time off. I arrive soon."

"Driving in from Asgard, are you?" Bård said weakly.

"Horseback, from Marienlyst. I has been in the same café since my last meeting, awaitening your call." Which Brynjar then ended abruptly.

Bård sat, heavily, on the bed, staring at his phone. He had to find something plausible to tell Concorde. 

He went back and fetched that spare tube of toothpaste. By the time he was back with it, he had decided this was a thing he could delegate. He called Magnus.

"Bård! Is everything okay? Do you need Calle to come get you?"

"Um... I'm going to have to take some time away from the office, Magnus."

He heard a door close, and then the background noise vanished, and the timbre of Magnus' voice changed. "Is it Vegard?" 

"Yeah."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"I don't know." But, Bård reflected, this wasn't like the other times he hadn't known. He added, his voice steadying and strengthening, "He will be if _I_ have anything to say about it."

"Good. Go get him. I'll work up an excuse for Kamilla," Magnus promised. "Can I ask just one thing, though? And you don't have to tell me, but I've been wondering for... months, now, I think."

"You can ask," Bård said, bracing himself for the question.

"Does this have anything to do with what's happening in Jotunheimen?"

"Wait, _what_?" It was so far out of left field that he was at a loss for a moment. "What's happening in Jotunheimen?"

"Haven't you been looking at the papers at all?" (Bård couldn’t help a bitter laugh at this.) "All those hikers and skiers dying or disappearing... mobile phones not working, planes and helicopters having engine failures... When the Schulman film was released, I remember thinking, That's the same shade of blue as the thing Vegard kept looking at in the office, before he left. And since the last weird thing I noticed turned out to be right..."

"Schulman," Bård echoed wonderingly. He’d seen Rebekah Schulman’s staticky, distorted recording, and the strange blue flash that had come from the mountains below her. "I... don’t know."

"Look, don’t worry about it," Magnus said. "Is there anything I can do to help?" 

"You’re already doing it," Bård said. Jotunheimen. A distortion field. "You’ve already done it."

***

Finn was out when the text came for him. Brynjar. Melantha, sitting at the kitchen table, pounced on it. "The game is afoot; I will be there in ten minutes," it said. "Look at his eyes."

It sent a wave of dread through her. "The game"? Seriously? As her pregnancy had progressed, as week after week ticked by without disaster, as the imagings showed only healthy robust activity, she'd found herself getting more nervous, not less. She felt as if something enormous were looming over her, hanging by a thread. This was not a game; this was their life. And she felt a flare of anger at Brynjar, for trying to pull Finn into whatever he was up to now. 

She toyed with Finn's phone, flipping it over and over between her fingers. Logged in, finally, and erased the message. Jessalyn would be shocked. Well, and she was a little shocked at herself. This was not okay. 

But was it more okay for Finn to put himself in danger again? To be beaten up again, or worse, to lose his standing, to be seized and arrested and maybe have his own magic ripped out? Finn had told her what had happened to Vegard in more detail than she could ever have wanted, and she’d been hearing second- and third-hand what had become of him since. And Finn, bless him, was too easy to bully. They would offer to take his magic out, and he would say yes of course, anything to be back with his young family, and then he would be a hollow-eyed shuffling shell, at the very time when she needed him most.

And Brynjar had to know this, didn’t he? Hadn’t he been through a version of it himself? He could have been killed, crashing that car. He could have lost them the show. He should know better than to draw Finn into this stuff. A family _changed_ things.

It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. She understood very well. Her sword hung on the wall in her bedroom. She missed it fiercely, its weight in her hand, and there were days when she thought that it surely couldn’t hurt to do some simple exercises with it. Except that was what she’d thought last time, and she’d gone and done it, and maybe that hadn’t been the culprit and maybe it had. 

She jumped when she heard the door. It really wasn’t good for her to be worrying like this. Flooding the baby’s system with stress hormones. She clicked the phone off and put it down.

Finn walked in, toying with a curl at the side of his head, winding it around a finger and letting it go again. "There it is," he said, pouncing on his phone. "I just, did Brynjar call? No. I thought... I had a feeling..." His shoulders sagged. "I guess it’s just as well."

He went to the fridge, took out milk. Went to the breadbox, took out bread. Went to the fridge again, took out jam. Put the milk back. Put the bread in the fridge. Stared at the jam. Looked in the breadbox. He opened the cupboards one by one, first slowly and methodically, and then with increasing agitation. 

"Finn?" she said.

He turned to her, eyes haunted and panicky, the whites showing all the way around them. "Willyoumarryme?" he said in a rush.

"What?"

He dropped so abruptly that she thought for a moment he was having some sort of episode, but he was just going to the floor on one knee in front of her. He took her hand gently. His eyes were still the eyes of a caged animal, but his voice was a benediction. "Melantha Aruviel, will you do me the honour of pledging your hand to a sacred binding of our hearts and houses and dooms?"

Why on Earth was he doing this now? Ah. Because somehow he _knew_ , and if he was going to choose her over his friends, he was making bloody well sure it wasn’t a half-measure.

But his eyes were getting wider and more frantic, and his face was getting paler, with every moment that she looked down at him. "I don’t have a ring," he said finally. "Yet. I can get one. Ruby? Would you like... ruby? Sapphire?" He swallowed hard. "Emerald? Opal? Amethyst? Pearl? Amber? Carnelian? Chalcedony?" His voice had risen to a squeak.

She thought about the sword hanging up in her room. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand. She drew him up and lifted his hand to her lips, and smiled sadly at him. "Sweet Finn."

He was shaking like an overbred dog.

"Brynjar did text," she told him, looking at his knuckles and not at him. "I... panicked. I’ve been so on edge. I erased it. It was wrong, and I'm so sorry. I thought of you getting hurt, I thought of what happened to Vegard, and I panicked."

He sucked in a breath. "Okay. Um. Okay. Wow. Thank you for telling me."

"He'll be here in... three minutes. Go and do what you need to do, and then..."

"Then you’ll have an answer for me?" he said.

She felt weak with relief. "If you still want to when you come back, it will be my honour to marry the living daylights out of you."

Finn leapt to his feet and raced to the bedroom. As he packed, he called, "We should probably talk about this when I get back. About everything. With actual words this time. But if anything happens to me, I want to be absolutely clear right now that I forgive you. Actually, if anything happens to me, you were right all along. But I still have to do it. You know that."

"I'd rather be wrong," she said, as he emerged with his bag. They embraced a little awkwardly around her growing belly, and she held tight to him until a whinny split the air. He kissed her, then, and ran out the side door, his face transformed by joy.

***

Bård waited for Brynjar in his snow-covered back yard, under a darkening sky. A rush of wind, a flutter of shadow, the soft thud of hooves on grass, and then he was being lifted into the saddle behind his double. Bård made his grip on the man’s waist into a quick hug, and Brynjar squeezed his forearms. "I has longed for this day," he said, as Sleipnir launched herself onto the old roads. "Now mayhaps shall things be righted again."

Their speed dropped suddenly, in a gut-twisting plunge, and then Finn was scrambling up behind Bård, his own bag packed. "We’re going to get Vegard?" Finn demanded. "Is he okay?"

"Yes on the first, we don’t know on the second," Bård said grimly, squeezing Finn’s arm. "You’re up for this, though?"

"Of _course_ ," Finn said.

Bård had only ever been on the old roads in the Mazda Brynjar had wrecked. If anything, on Sleipnir's back they were travelling even faster. The air was cool but not cold, and dry, and utterly still. "I must takes us a long way," Brynjar said, his voice edged with frustration, but curiously flat in the air of the place. "Sleipnir caution that the distortion field warps even the roads around it. She must approaching carefully." 

Behind him, Bård felt Finn shift uncomfortably. "Ugh. How did we miss _that_?"

"We was fearful and distractified," Brynjar replied grimly.

"I meant we as in _everybody_ ," Finn countered. "I think four civilians with day jobs as comedians are forgivable, but as a newly minted taxpayer, I would rather pay for someone to keep tabs on _this_ sort of thing than to have my cousin incarcerated and maimed, thank you."

Bård decided it was safe, now, to turn back and mutter into Finn's ear, "Your cousin thought he might have been incarcerated and maimed to _fuel_ this."

Finn's jaw didn't drop, precisely, but he looked more and more horrified until his mouth was hanging open. "My gods. They're _stealing_ magic? To make this! But... they must have been doing it for years. _Why?_ Who could possibly benefit from something like this?"

Bård could feel something in the air, like the static before a storm, but he couldn't see the disruption they were talking about. Before filling Finn in on what was happening, he whistled the soundkey that would activate the second layer of glamour-stripping in his contacts, so he could see what they were talking about.

"NO!" Brynjar squawked, a fraction of a second too late. The ambient magic still wasn’t visible in the air, but Bård was suddenly seeing the old roads without their illusions. There was no up or down or in or out or self or other, no boundaries on anything. He was the size of a microbe, striding across whole galaxies in a single step. Bård was the light and the void and the hot dense core and the bond that held everything together and the moment between one breath and the next. He was nothing and he was everything and he needed to make it _stop_. In an unthinking panic, he fought himself free of the hands trying to restrain him, and flung himself off Sleipnir’s back, plunging down and down and down, into the frigid North Atlantic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: REM's "Finest Worksong" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=559eWB93jW4


	27. On Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rescue / Finn despairs / Bård among the selkies / Blending in with humans #7: caring for animal friends / Dominoes

Bård was so sleepy. He was chilly and lying on a lump, and there was something he had to do today, but he wanted nothing more than to burrow under the covers, warm up, and get a few more hours.

The blanket was clammy. He must have kicked it off when he started to sweat. Well, it was time to put it back on. It was a weird blanket. Oily, not really square. What was it he had to do, anyway? A meeting? An interview? Not a rehearsal or a show, it was the wrong time of year... 

He reached out and fumbled for his phone on the nightstand. His hand found only bare unfinished wood, smooth with years of wear and salt. 

Salt... the sound of waves...

A creaky door opened, and a light shone in his face. "Here!" a child shouted.

Bård bolted to a sitting position. Even that small effort fatigued him, set his heart pounding. He was naked, and he clutched the blanket around himself, becoming aware as he did that it was an animal skin of some sort. 

"Be easy, be easy," an older woman's voice soothed. "Nobody's going to hurt you."

"I don't, I don't..." He became aware that he was slurring words. Had he gotten it wrong? Was he Brynjar? Oh god, Brynjar! He squinted into the light, too weak to do much more than shield his eyes.

A weight settled next to him. "Okay," a man's voice said, gently, close to his ear. "I'm gonna put this blanket around you and bundle you up, okay? And then we'll take you someplace warm."

"'Kay."

The warmth of the blanket made him realize just how cold he'd been. As his rescuers lifted him in his woolly cocoon, one taking his shoulders and one his ankles, he started to shiver. 

"Korall, don't forget your skin," the woman said, and in the shafts of shifting light from the torch they'd brought, Bård saw a little girl pick up the skin he'd been using as a blanket, and sling it over her shoulder. Then she darted to another corner of the small wooden hut and grabbed a sodden lump. "His clothes," she explained.

Outside, the wind was blowing, and Bård felt his wet hair freeze stiff. Every so often, he would gather the strength to raise his head and look at them. The man must be carrying his shoulders. The woman was in front of him. His knees were under her arms. The little girl walked alongside, holding the flashlight over rocky, icy ground. She was wearing muddy boots and a bathrobe. Her calves were bare. "Aren't you cold?" Bård tried to say, but it came out as a mumble.

They crossed a road, and then gravel crunched under their feet. A door opened, spilling out warmth and light. "Hlín be praised," a young woman shouted from the doorway. "Bring him in!"

They carried him into a clean but cluttered modern house and deposited him on a cot hastily set up on a tiled floor in front of the hearth. Telling him in soothing voices what they were doing at every step, they gently unwound the first blanket and put on several new ones, and put a towel-wrapped hot water bottle on his chest and another one on his abdomen and a couple of microwaved gel pillows at his groin. The little girl threw off her bathrobe and cuddled up on one side of him. A stocky teenaged boy took off his shirt and cuddled up on the other. "Freyja's nipples!" he cried when his skin touched Bård's, and he pressed close, starting to rub Bård's arm vigorously. 

"Ah-ah-ah, gentle-gentle," the older woman said, grabbing the boy's hand. "Cold men have fragile hearts."

"Right." The boy stopped rubbing and just bent over him, covering the cold skin of Bård's arms and legs and chest with his own, but every so often he would change position, to spread the warmth.

"Can you tell us your name?" the man asked. He was fat, with light brown skin, flowing dark hair, and kind, narrow, wide-set eyes. He wore a dark blue dress shirt, and black pants with black suspenders.

Bård weighed the merits of telling the truth. "Bård," he said, pleased to hear that the slurring had improved. It was a common enough name.

"I'm Drivved," said the man. "These are my mother Perle, my wife Karin, and my children Korall and Flyndre." As he talked, he poured something from a saucepan into a mug. "Bård, do you think you can drink some hot chocolate?"

"Yeah. Thank you."

They eased him into a sitting position and put the cup to his lips. It was a little embarrassing, but they were probably right not to trust his hands, which were kitten-weak and shaking with cold. He drank. It was good hot chocolate, strong and sweet. 

"Good save, Korall," Flyndre said, looking across Bård at his younger sister. His eyes shifted to Bård. "She ran in stark naked, saying a man fell from the sky. I didn’t believe her."

"Naked?" Bård echoed.

"I was swimming when you fell," she explained, hugging his arm, resting her cheek on his shoulder. She was maybe about eight, chubby, brown-skinned like her father, with the same widely spaced dark eyes, and her long black hair was indeed wet. "I pushed you to the surface and put you in the old boat house and I took all your wet clothes off and used my skin to cover you up like Ms. Bukt said. Then I went to get help."

" _Swimming?_ I mean, especially swimming naked, but _swimming?_ "

"In my seal skin, silly."

"I think you saved my life," Bård told her. "Thank you."

"You’re welcome," she said solemnly.

His eyelids were heavy. He begged a clean empty saucer from his hosts, and with clumsy hands, blinked out his contact lenses. He nearly lost one, but the boy saw what he was trying to do and steadied his hand so that he could put it in the saucer. Then the others eased him back down. Out of danger, Bård slept.

***

Two hours after Sleipnir had reared and wheeled, setting them down to search for her lost rider, Finn went to his knees on the ocean surface, weeping. "We’re not going to find him."

Brynjar drew Finn back to his feet. The smaller man was soaked in icy salt water, some of it Atlantic and some homemade. "Not like this," Brynjar agreed, "but he lives."

"You said you couldn’t see anything."

"The interference are too great to seeing his whereabouts," Brynjar agreed, "but he are my original. If he were killified it would smite my soul. For a little I thinked to follow the smiting and thus pull him back to livingness, but it wouldst have come by now, and it has not."

"I didn’t feel anything when Vegard was stabbed."

"You has not my sensitivities, Finn. Also he were in no real danger. Come, let us away to shelter and dry clothes."

"But Bård..."

"...would not live still without help, so we know he have help. Only one have the power to find him, and I would find _him_."

"Vegard."

"Vegard." Brynjar walked back to where Sleipnir stood patiently. After a long last look at the patch of ocean that was Sleipnir's best guess as to where Bård had gone down, Finn trudged back to the horse, part of him grimly satisfied by the chill and the damp and the burn of salt in his eyes and on his skin. He deserved to be miserable. He’d lost them both now. But he knew that these feelings, as much as they needed to be untangled and looked after, were an indulgence he couldn’t afford right now. While there was a chance to save the brothers, it was best to defer to Brynjar, who still hoped.

***

Bård awoke in the wee hours, finally warm, his hands and feet burning and tingling. The kitchen was dim and the selkies were sound asleep, all shirtless, with their upper bodies draped on top of him. He had to get up. "Um," he said quietly.

There were footsteps, and Karin stood over him. She had curly blonde hair, and was wearing sweats. "Hello," she said, smiling. "Glad you’re back."

"I need to get up," he said, voice tight with desperation. "I need to use your bathroom."

"Oh, just push them off," she replied fondly. "They’re sound sleepers."

The thought of unceremoniously dumping his rescuers to the ground did not appeal. On the other hand, that had been real milk in the hot chocolate. Karin helped him extricate himself from the nest of blankets and selkies, and helped him to his feet.

"Oh... naked," he said, looking down. "Sorry."

She laughed. "Trust me, after a week with this lot you don’t even notice." She let him lean on her, and guided him to the bathroom.

He stayed there for a long time. At first he slumped sideways against the tiles, but that made him start shivering again, so he just put his elbows on his knees and held his head until he was good and sure that his guts had stopped boiling. Several times, Karin called for him through the door. He assured her that he was all right, and no, _no_ , he did not need her to come in.

As he sat, he collected his thoughts. Everything was still a bit detached and dreamlike, and his mind still shied away from those last few moments on Sleipnir, but he remembered the rest: he was going to Jotunheimen to rescue Vegard from his undercover mission. It all sounded very grand, and here he was, small and shivery and naked and very very abject at the moment. He hoped that Finn and Brynjar had continued without him. Maybe everything was over and they had Vegard, safe and sound. Or maybe everything was just over, but he wasn’t going to think like that.

After a few false starts--he had observed in the mirror, during one of them, that he was very pale, but that his hands, feet, ears, cheeks, and the tip of his nose, where the skin burned and tingled, were red and a little swollen--he decided that the bout had passed, and washed his hands and emerged, sheepish, leaning on the walls for support. He'd gotten three steps when Karin met him with a fluffy robe many sizes too big for him, and walked him to a solidly built oak table.

"Here," she said, pushing a cup at him. "I made some tea."

"Thanks." He sat, and drank. Chamomile, just the thing to settle a stomach. "Where am I?"

"The island of Runde," she said. "My daughter says you fell out of the sky."

"Long story," he said, propping his head up on one fist. 

"It took me awhile to realize, with the frostbite," she said, "but you're on TV, aren't you?"

"Yeah. You're... human?"

"Yeah." She glanced at Drivved, snoring away with his head and upper body still propped up on the cot. "I grew up here. I love to walk the shores. One rough evening in 1997, I was home from school and I'd just broken off my first serious relationship, and there was a man in the waves. We sat on the dock during the storm and talked all night long. He tells everyone he was enchanted with my beauty. I was enchanted with his. He moved ashore for me. Can you imagine that?"

"I can imagine a lot," Bård said, wincing as his grin pulled the frostbitten skin on his cheeks. 

"Hang on, hang on," she said, getting up, and it was with a certain amount of horror that he realized she was going into the bathroom. But she didn't say anything--just handed him a small jar. "Rub this wherever the frost bit you. Be gentle."

As he applied it to his hands and feet and face and ears, he thought he felt something subtly at work, but he didn't have his lenses in. "Is it magic?"

"Not as such," she said with a wave of her hands. "Just a little Underjordiske hearth-witchery."

"I'm still a bit new to all this," Bård confessed, stroking cream onto the tip of his nose, not rubbing it in for fear of chafing his tender skin. "I don't know the difference."

"Something sciencey," she said dismissively, rolling her eyes a little. "According to magical physics, a lot of what my husband's people do shouldn't work. But it does. Perle could probably tell you all about it tomorrow. She really wanted to go off and study it, but I gather the elves made her undergrad years hell. And back in the day, they didn't even have dorms for the aquatic types." She gave him an anxious look. "You know about the elves, right? I'm not shocking you?"

Bård had to laugh. "Oh yes. We know about the elves. Christ, do we know about the elves."

"'We'... so your brother too? The one you do your show with?"

"Yeah." Bård looked off into the distance, hoping that Vegard was okay, hoping that Finn and Brynjar had gotten to him. 

Karin's hand went to her mouth. "He didn't fall with you, did he?"

_I thought he fell before me, but really it was a controlled dive._ "No. He's waiting for me. I have to get to--" Should he tell her? Perhaps not, but he couldn't see a way of getting there without help. "--Jotunheimen."

"Jotunheimen," she echoed with a frown. "That's a good four and a half hours from here."

Bård hadn't registered movement by the hearth until Perle stood over him. "How were you going?" she asked.

"I, uh..." Bård ran a hand through his hair. "I was riding a magic horse. Not very well, apparently."

"Why Jotunheimen?" Karin asked. "What’s going on there?"

"I don't know," Bård said. He didn't want to tell them the whole truth, but they didn't deserve his lies, either. "We thought... maybe... from things we'd heard... I couldn't get in touch with him, nobody can, and from what I'd heard it seemed like a good place to investigate."

Perle poured her own cup of tea and joined them at the table. "It’s not a safe place to travel to," she said. "There is something very large and very powerful in the mountains. It warps magic. It's started interfering with electromagnetic signals. There are magical barriers run all along the east side of the Utladalen. They went up some, I guess, three years ago now. No one bothers to tell the humans, though, and for some months now, those that venture in have died or simply disappeared. If you ask the authorities, _our_ authorities, they say that it’s classified, that it is a matter of the security of the realm."

"My brother might be in there," Bård said. 

The older woman sighed heavily. "You’re going to go no matter what we tell you, aren’t you?"

"Nothing you just said makes me less worried about him."

"We'll work something out," Karin said rapidly.

"Oh! Thank you, but... I wouldn’t, I mean, I’m not asking. You saved my life already, you’ve given me your hospitality, you’ve already gone above and beyond..."

In response, Perle placed a thumb in the middle of his forehead. Without his contacts, Bård saw nothing, but he felt something inside himself unfurl like a flower, and his breath caught in his throat.

Her voice vibrated in the very depths of him. " _Hurðin er opin; taktu það sem þú þarft._ " 

Whatever had unfurled inside him burst into bloom, draining his strength with it. He slumped back in the chair, barely able to raise his head. "Wha... whazzat?" 

"For tomorrow." She got under one of his arms, and motioned for Karin to take the other. "Stop fighting it. Just let it work."

"I... I..." They lowered him to the cot, shoving half-naked family members aside, and covered him up again. Bård fought to stay awake. "I don’ understand..."

Karin brushed his hair back from his forehead. "Mama, you should probably have explained to him. Or, y'know, _asked_?"

"Probably," Perle agreed ruefully, looking down at him. She knelt, and patted his shoulder. "I'm sorry. But it's too late now, isn't it?"

Bård could only whimper. His eyes kept sliding closed. Desperate, he turned his attention inward, at the thing she'd opened up inside him, and was able to make sense of the basic structure. If he'd done that first, he might have been able to stop it, but she was right--it was too late.

"You rest now," Perle said, as sleep dragged him down. "Don't fight. Just rest."

***

Øvre Årdal was a bustling town of twenty-two thousand, ranging up and down the valley of Utladalen, on the edge of Jotunheimen. Finn and Brynjar, riding an exhausted Sleipnir, reached it at four in the morning.

The horse had tried again and again to get them as close to Jotunheimen as possible using the old roads, but the distortion sent her far off course every time. Brynjar had suggested around midnight that she set down wherever she could, but she was angry and frustrated, and still furious with herself for losing Bård, and she only doubled back, tail switching fast and hard, ears pinned back, six unshod hooves kicking up grey sparks on the illusory road while the other two waved angrily in front of her. It would take her another hour and a half to admit defeat: she left the old roads just outside of Rødberg and stood on a hillside amongst the trees, breath and coat steaming, head hanging, tail drooping, making a noise of utter misery.

Brynjar had patted her shoulder. "Oh, I knows, my lovely. It are not fair. You trieded your best, and better. Now letting us get you to someplace warm. There will be hot mash and sugarcubes. Now, now, you _does_ deserve it."

She picked her way down the hillside, making small displeased noises, but at the bottom she shook herself, and built up speed, as if running off her frustration. Sticking mainly to human roads, leaving them only to overtake cars or when a bend made going over ground more practical, she got them to Øvre Årdal. 

The human quarter on the south end of town was quiet and still. "I smell evil," Finn said.

Brynjar shut his eyes. Sometime in the last twenty minutes, he’d begun to look pale and pained, and he was listing heavily to his left. "That are the aluminum smelting plant," he said. 

"You're slurring."

"Yes."

Finn dismounted and led them through the human quarter, north into the clearer air of the elven and Underjordiske neighbourhoods. He was the one who found a guesthouse with its sign lit and office lights on, and booked them a room. He paid cash, and gave a fake name; and when the ifrit at the desk said she’d need to see ID or collect a thousand-kroner deposit, he paid it without hesitation. When he rejoined them on the street, Sleipnir knelt and Finn helped Brynjar dismount, and offered him an arm as he staggered in, and spilled him into a chair in the lobby while the clerk made a couple of calls to area stables. Finn was weary and numb, but Brynjar walked like he hurt, and he was covering the left side of his face. 

Finn deposited Brynjar in the room and came back down. He spent twenty minutes leading Sleipnir to the stable their hostess had kindly found for them. Every time he started to think about losing Bård, the horse bit his ear. 

He was met at the doorway of a tiny farmhouse by a yawning nisse girl with a lantern. He paid her, throwing in extra for the promised hot bran mash and sugarcubes. The girl looked for a moment like she wanted to protest, and then she looked up at Sleipnir, who was blinking her eight eyes heavily and shivering in the cold, and went to fetch the things for Finn. 

He spent another half hour grooming Sleipnir, thanking her, making sure she was dry and warm and feeling better. Eventually, she motioned with her head that he should go back and get some sleep. She lipped his hair and nudged him away, and he plodded back to the guesthouse, where he kicked off his shoes, shed his clothes, and fell facefirst onto the coverlet. He should probably have a shower to get the salt off him, but Brynjar was asleep on the other bed with his duster and one shoe still on, so he didn't feel too bad.

***

Ardriel was late for work that day. He hated to be that unprofessional, but Cam had been late down to breakfast, and was pale and listless, and when he’d pushed her to finish her cereal so he could take her to school, she had turned away and thrown up all over everything.

So he’d gotten Cam cleaned up and tucked into bed and dosed with a minty pink bismuth potion, he’d gotten Turid to look after her, he’d texted Lavinia and Konglen and let them know that he had a very sick eight-year-old on his hands, and then he cleaned the mess in the kitchen as best he could--Turid could get the rest, surely--and then of course he’d had to change, and then, only then, did he make it into the office.

Konglen gave him a sympathetic smile as he strode in, rumpled and a little out of breath. "Good morning, sir. How’s the mite?"

"Not feeling too well," he sighed, "but she’s got a new Sofie Klokvidd mystery, so she’s not going to be totally miserable today."

And when he got into his office, and sat down at his desk, he envied her. First, there was a message from Euriel. For him. Via the affiliate in Røros. Ardriel _had_ been under the impression that the man’s silence over the past week was a good thing. And this wasn’t like him at all; Euriel understood the chain of command, and he understood that both halves of the operation had to be kept absolutely separate. When he listened to Euriel’s message, though, it made sense. "Bubble’s bigger. Couldn’t get through to Ringebu. Mobile’s down. Alvdal and Berset down. Suggest implementing LJ’s strategy ASAP."

He’d been necessarily vague, but Ardriel understood. The interference bubble must have grown to encompass the Kilpi administrative headquarters in Ringebu... which was very bad news indeed, he realized with a wave of guilt. If containment had degraded to the point where the bubble reached all the way to Ringebu, that was probably why Cam was sick. Euriel had gone through the affiliate because they were the ones with the number for the land line here. And two more anchors were gone. 

This was the last straw. He slid his finger across the skrib that connected him with reception. "Konglen, can you e-mail Kilpi to put guards on the anchors ASAP? Just get them to make sure they’re working, and stay there. Every single one of them. Today."

"Can do," she chirped. "Phone would be quicker, if you’d rather."

"I don’t think that’s going to work," he told her.

"E-mail it is," she said brightly, and broke the connection.

He checked his own e-mail next, and his uneasiness turned into outright dread. Here was a grumpy note from Yolinael, from last night: Askvoll, where they’d painstakingly laid a trap for their terrorists, must have been gotten to weeks ago. He, too, recommended installing guards and wards and cameras at the other sites, all of them, as soon as practicable.

Then there were reports from the two remaining pixies keeping an eye on Bård Ylvisåker. The human had left work early yesterday and not returned. His vehicles were in the driveway, but he was not at home. Ardriel checked the other report. Nor was Finn Weber. He felt, even now, a flash of bitter satisfaction that he’d been right to keep the surveillance up on them, in the face of Harael’s complaints that they were wasting resources.

What did _this_ mean? 

Next he sifted through the e-mails that the Peace Division’s database automatically sent him from the Wild Hunt, bracing himself for more bad news, and hoping for some good. He knew some IP numbers off by heart now, and the Aruviel cow didn’t seem to be searching anything different. She’d seemed to realize that even the shielded searches could be traced back to her, because she’d only ever tried the once. And from the looks of things, svartalfar in Nedrekorgen seemed to be organizing a riot. He would have to make sure they put the word out about that. But oh, oh, someone on Runde had searched Bård Ylvisåker. Out of the blue.

"Hi, Konglen? One more thing. I want the security increased. Here and on the compound. Double it, and put everyone else on standby."

"Everyone?" she said dubiously. "All three shifts?"

"Yes, that sounds good. And expand the checkpoints out to Perimeter Four."

"Patrols too?"

"Gods yes."

"Something wrong, sir?"

"I hope I’m just being paranoid," he told her. But he didn’t think he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Leftfield's "Melt" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3grqa6t71w


	28. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mutually beneficial arrangement / Bård with a seal / Noise / The checkpoint

Bård snapped awake. He was still under the blankets from last night, and wearing the robe too, but a stray sunbeam had crept onto his cot, bathing him in light and heat. The air smelled like bacon.

"Good morning, Bård," Perle said. She was in a housedress today, her hair plaited into a single neat white braid.

"Good morning," he said cautiously, sitting up and gathering his legs underneath him. He’d slept very well, and felt amazingly good. His hands and feet were peeling, but underneath was soft, smooth skin. The deep exhaustion from his brush with death was utterly gone. He was, though, terribly hungry.

"I want to apologize for last night," she said. "My daughter pointed out to me that you probably had no idea what I was doing, or what to do if you didn’t want it."

"Thank you," he said. "She was right. But whatever it was, I’m much better."

She busied herself in putting together a plate from various covered dishes. "It’s a healing spell," she said. 

Bård went very, very still, and put his fingers to his forehead.

She turned, and shook her head. "Not like that. I looked you up when my daughter-in-law told me who you were. I saw what happened to your brother--I’m so sorry, by the way--but that was on someone else, right?"

"A changeling," Bård agreed. "To save his life."

"Ah, well. That’s all right, then."

"What’s all right?"

"Changelings are a different bit of business. They take way too much energy to convert, and it’s the rare specimen that can supply any of it for themselves. But if he’d gone away just for healing, I could understand this being a bit of a kick in the teeth now."

"Mmh?"

She put a plate of bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes and pickled herring on the table. "Come and eat," she said. "I know you’re starving; it’s one of the side effects."

He rose easily, grabbed a fork, and dug in. "Thanks," he said with his mouth full. "You were saying?"

"Just that the spell I used on you is more an Underjordiske thing. Instead of relying on blood for the patterning and identification of the energy source, and the glyph for the shape of the magic, you just tap into the patient’s magic and tell it to heal. _You_ know how to heal. You would have done it anyway. This just speeds it up a little."

The bacon was a little crispier than he would have liked, but the eggs were perfect. _Perfect_. "Why would anyone do the other thing, then? Especially when it’s illegal."

She chuckled, and brought two cups of coffee to the table. "Are you genuinely interested, or are you just being polite?"

"Genuinely interested. My brother is... well, he _was_ a bit of a magic geek, before they took it from him. I promised him that I would keep on top of it for him."

She offered him cream, and when he waved it off, with thanks, poured it into her own coffee. "It’s a lot culture, and a bit personal preference, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. There’s no sense doing any kind of blood magic underwater, and ‘Be thou whole’ is a dangerous thing to impose on anyone who might be using their current body form to pass. Not to mention anyone who’s had a life-threatening or even just disfiguring congenital defect corrected."

Bård nodded slowly, running his tongue over the new teeth he’d spent thousands of kroner to have look false. "They’d get it right back, wouldn’t they?"

"Just so. Not only that; you felt how much tapping in drained you. You wouldn’t want to do that to someone near death. I’m told that blood magic spreads the fatigue out a little over more time, _and_ it lets you use your own blood on someone else if they’re too weak or too badly injured or don’t have any magic. But of course, now it’s illegal, which is ridiculous."

"Karin said you almost went to school for this."

"Yes. Well, I got my Bachelor of Magical Theory, and I wanted to go further, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. At the time." She shook herself and said, "Anyway. You are feeling better, aren’t you?"

"Much. I really appreciate everything that you’ve done."

She waved it off. "Hospitality. I know that’s not how they do things in Oslo, but if sometime in the future you’d make an exception for a weary traveller, we would consider ourselves well repaid."

Something about the way she said it made Bård look up and cock his head at her. 

She smiled thinly and said, "Although I have pointed out to my son and my daughter-in-law that it is _exceedingly_ bad form to ask favours of the recipient of one's hospitality, they seem to think that your arrival is fortuitous. That you might be the perfect solution to a problem that we've been having for months."

Bård had a sinking feeling, but he swallowed it back. These people had taken a complete stranger into their house and gotten naked with him to save his life. If it weren't for them, he wouldn't exist to answer Vegard's call at all. "What can I do to help?"

"Last fall we ordered an innoculant for our herring, against _Ichthyophonus hoferi_ , from an ichthyomancer in Skjolden. It's been ready since January, it needs to be applied by the Equinox, and it needs to be stored above ten degrees Celsius. That means transporting it inside the cab of our truck, so whoever goes to get it must bring it home alone. Drivved had set aside a weekend to go, and then his sister got sliced by a propeller and needed all of us to help out until she healed up. He can't afford a day away now, the ichthyomancer isn't going to do business with a human, I never learned to drive, and Flyndre is more than willing, but he's only sixteen. He knows how to drive and he’s got his standing and his practice credentials and we can put on an L sticker, but no one has wanted to send him all that way alone."

"I'm human too," Bård protested. "I don’t know what I would be able to do."

Flyndre bounded down the stairs, tugging a sweater over his head. "Are we going? Come on, we’re going, right?"

Perle grinned fondly. "If you went with Flyndre, Bård, he would have an adult's company for at least the first half of the trip, which is a good sight better than what we were facing before, and you would be able to get most of the way to your destination."

Bård mulled this over, looking from one to the other. "I would be really, really grateful for a way to get there. And of course happy to help. But I need you to know, I have no idea what I’m going into. As far as I understand, I’m going to be dealing with people who were willing to hurt my brother very badly."

"You’re getting revenge? Awesome!" Flyndre said, punching the air. He ladled porridge from the pot on the stove, helped himself to fruit and herring from the fridge, and sat down at the table, eating with gusto.

Bård put a restraining hand on his arm. "Flyndre, it’s not awesome. And it’s not revenge. It’s very dangerous. They had their eyes on me for awhile too, and I think I escaped _that_ last night." His eyes roved to Perle. "If you still want me to do this, I am too desperate right now to say no, and you have my word that I will do everything in my power to keep Flyndre safe. But I need you to understand, I can’t guarantee anything."

"But that’d be hours away from Skjolden," Flyndre said.

"Are there safeguards you can put in place?" Bård asked. "I don’t know... protective spells? Boltholes? Even, just, someone Flyndre can meet at a set time to make sure that he makes it to Skjolden, and raise the alarm if he hasn’t?"

"Hm," Perle said. "Excuse me for a moment." She slipped out of the room, taking her coffee with her.

When she returned, she brought him his contacts and his clothes, both cleaned, the latter warm from the dryer. They’d emptied his pockets. His keys were fine. The contents of his wallet had been arrayed on a baking sheet to dry. His cell phones were disassembled and in a jar of rice. Bård thought that was thoughtful, but he didn’t expect either to work. And when later, freshly showered, he reassembled them and gave them a try, his regular phone did not respond at all. "Take it to an electromancer," Perle said over his shoulder. Kai’s old phone, however, came immediately to life. "Repulsion spell," she observed. "Clever use of it."

"Can we go, though?" Flyndre pressed.

She sighed. "I just talked to an old school friend who lives by Bøyum. She knows who you are and what you’re driving, and she’s going to have family look in on you. On your way back, Flyndre, I’d like you to stop in with some dulse. I’ll give you the address."

"You’re sure about this?" Bård pressed.

She quirked her mouth. "You’re going to Jotunheimen. He’s going to Skjolden. You are almost certainly safer together."

"Almost," Bård said, "scares the hell out of me."

"Good," she said. "I feel better knowing that we agree."

***

Drivved and Karin were working, Drivved in the pens Perle said, and Karin at the Rundekystmagiskole where she taught and Korall was a student. Bård left them a note thanking them for everything they’d done, and promised that he would find a way to pay it forward, and do everything he could to get Flyndre back to them safely.

The day was sunny, with only a scattering of clouds off to the distant west. Bård stepped out of the small house and into an icy front yard that ran level for a few metres and then dropped sharply towards the road. Out back, he heard muffled clucking, and surmised that they kept birds as well. 

Across the road, the sea was relatively calm, dark steely blue. He shuddered involuntarily.

"Are you traumatized now?" Flyndre asked, as he joined him at the truck. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Bård tried not to let him see the grin. "I think I’ll be okay, thanks." He walked back to the front stoop, where Perle held a bundle in her arms. "Perle, I’m sure there’s a ceremonial thing I do to thank you for your hospitality, for saving my life and opening your home to me and giving me passage to where I’m going, but in its place please accept an artless human’s honest gratitude."

She chuckled, and gave him a hug. "That’s pretty artful, my duck." She raised her voice. "Flyndre, you mind Bård now, all right?"

"I will, Grandmother."

Then she pulled back, and handed Bård two plastic shopping bags. "Toiletries and a change of clothes. Nothing that’ll fit you well, I’m sure, but better than nothing. And lunch."

"Thank you," he said. "For everything. I’ll do my very best."

***

Finn awoke feeling muzzy and a bit headachey. The light was funny, and the little red numbers at his bedside table told him that it was one o’clock. One o’clock!

He sat up, panicked. Melly had just let him sleep? No... he was in Øvre Årdal. He peered around at the strange hotel room, awash in ambient magic, and remembered. The pre-interview that would change everything. Offering his doom to Melantha, and having her pledge her doom to his in the very same breath that she confessed to erasing his texts. Going to rescue Vegard. His breath caught in his throat as he remembered: dropping Bård.

"Brynjar?"

Brynjar was in exactly the same position Finn had left him in. "Unnnggghh?"

"Is... everyone still alive?"

"Mmm. Vegard... lives. Near. Bård lives. Myself I am not so sure." As an afterthought, he added, "You seems fine."

Finn went over to the other bed and sat down. He took Brynjar’s other shoe off, thought about it, and got his socks and his duster, too, and folded the duvet over him, tucking him in. "Are you sick? Because if so, I just want you to know, you picked a hell of a time."

Brynjar rolled over, rubbing the left side of his face, which was alarmingly droopy. "What sees you, Finn? Around?"

"With, like...?" Finn closed his eyes, and looked. It was a din of magic, a howling maelstrom that saturated his magical senses. "Nothing." He opened his eyes; the mundane little hotel room around him was a relief. "Whatever they’re doing here, it drowns out everything. They have to know it can't keep going like that. It's not safe." He took another look at Brynjar, pale and sweaty. "It's bothering you that much?"

"It are half my vision, no matter what I do." He rubbed his face again, and laughed weakly, sinking back onto the pillow. "I never thinked anything would make me long for the days when my eye worked not."

Finn poised a hand over him. "You sure?"

Brynjar lurched to a sitting position. "I would entreat that you sets your mind to the problem later, and takes the present moment to assist me in the blowing of chunks."

Finn took a moment to parse this out, and then he moved very, very fast.

***

There was an Esso station in Skei, where they were slated to turn off the E39 and onto Rv5. Bård and Flyndre stopped for gas there and lunch at a little cafeteria next to Audhild Viken, opting to save for later what Perle had packed them. Flyndre protested that he had money, but Bård wasn't about to make him use it.

The boy exacted his revenge by being back in the driver's seat before Bård got back from the washroom. He'd let Bård drive from Hovdebygda, where they'd picked up the big highway, when Bård had argued that letting him wear himself out would not be good repayment for the family's kindness. Now Bård said, "Are you sure? You've got a long drive back alone."

"And you've got, like, a rescue mission. If I get tired, I'll crash with Grandma's friend. I swear." 

"Fair enough," Bård said with a grin. He climbed in the passenger side and did up his seatbelt. "Does this mean I get to pick the music?"

Flyndre shrugged as he pulled out of the parking lot. "Whatevs."

Well, that was a relief, anyway. In the past hour or so, Bård had discovered that he had a glitch hop threshold. He unplugged Flyndre's player and plugged in Kai's phone, and scrolled through until he found The Police. As the truck wound around Skeisbukta and then up towards the peaks of Husefjellet, Litlefjellet, and Kleivafjellet, their snowy sides lit golden in the sinking sun, the clean brightness of "Synchronicity I" was like a balm. 

"Listen," Flyndre said, "this revenge thing... you sure you couldn't use a trusty sidekick?"

"It's not a revenge thing," Bård said. "I'm going there to get my trusty sidekick _back_."

"Oh. You get along that well with your brother?"

Bård laughed. "If I didn't, I'd be in trouble, wouldn't I?" He thought, involuntarily, of that awful January. None of it had been the _truth_ , but it still left a sore spot in his thoughts. 

They entered the darkness of Fjærlandstunnelen. Maybe Flyndre detected Bård's discomfort and wanted to distract him, and maybe he was just curious. "Are you married?" 

"Yeah," Bård said, unable to keep a smile off his face. "Her name’s Maria. We got together when we were... not even your age."

"Oh." Flyndre looked at his hands. "Is that a long time?"

Bård did the math in his head. "Christ. Coming up on twenty years."

"Um... what’s it like?"

"It’s good," Bård said. "I don’t think I could be who I am without her. I don’t think I could do what I do." He glanced over at the boy. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No, no. I don’t think I do that."

"Oh. Boyfriend?"

"Not yet. The guys at school are kind of... immature."

Oh. _Oh_. "They won’t be that way forever," Bård assured him.

Flyndre snorted. "They gonna get less ugly, too?"

"Could be. Anyway, love has a way of making people beautiful." Bård grinned fondly. "At least that’s what Maria tells me."

They had emerged from the tunnel now, and Fremste Skeisnipet loomed over them. "Dude," Flyndre said, blinking in the light, "you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever _seen_. Sorry. If that makes things awkward. But it’s true."

"Well, thanks." There were cars stopped up ahead. Flyndre slowed the truck. "I looked very different at sixteen," Bård told him. Then he registered what was going on. "Bloody hell."

"What’s going on? Accident?"

"Spot check. And those aren't human police uniforms."

Flyndre paled. "Oh gods. Should we do a U-turn?"

"Then they'll _know_." Trying to keep his movements slow and casual, Bård opened the glove box, and found a multi-bit screwdriver, which he shoved in his pocket. "Let’s start by playing it cool," he told Flyndre, "but if he figures out who I am, act terrified. Cry a little. I’m very dangerous."

Four cars later, an officer strode up to the window. Bård kept both hands in his pockets, and smiled brightly at him. 

"Hi, Officer," Flyndre wavered. 

"Hey, kiddo." The officer wasn’t dálki, or even Peace Division. That was not a dálki uniform, even though it had the same lines. The blue was too dark. The insignia was a shield, but the wrong kind of shield. "Bit young to be driving, aren’t you?"

"I’m, uh, practicing." Flyndre pulled a sheaf of papers out of his pocket.

"Yeah?" the officer said, taking them and handing them back without more than a cursory glance. "Where are you headed today?""

"Um... Skjolden." 

"Yeah? What’s in Skjolden?"

"Picking up inoculant for my dad’s fish."

The officer peered at Bård. "You too, fella?"

"I’m along for the ride," Bård said, truthfully. "He's too young to drive alone."

"That so, Mr. Ylvisåker?"

Bård smiled. It was a charming, confident smile, and his close friends, family, and perhaps a handful of people he’d kicked in some of Europe's more iconic cities would have recognized it as the smile he used when he was in a lot of trouble. "That’s what he told me when he picked me up. He needed a driving companion." He shot Flyndre an intense glance that he was sure the officer caught, and then let his eyes shift to the cylindrical shape of the screwdriver in his pocket. "We’d better get on our way, hadn’t we, Flyndre? You’re expected, and you wouldn’t want them to miss you."

The same prickle of awareness that told Bård where the band was when he was on stage told him that there were people on his side of the truck now, and some extra sense of self-preservation suggested that they were armed. The officer on the driver’s side said, "Son, are you in fear for your life?"

It occurred to Bård just then that if Flyndre said no, they would know he was in league with Bård, but if he said yes, they might not hesitate to kill Bård then and there. "Um," Flyndre said, and maybe the same thing had occurred to him. 

All at once, a wave of trepidation and remorse washed over Bård. His muscles turned watery, his stomach fluttered, and tears started in his eyes. It was wrong, it had all gone wrong and he was about to kill an innocent child... 

That had been a mistake: that thought wasn’t _his_. Bård focused inward, and discerned the delicate threads of spellwork acting on him. He burned through them. It would not occur to him until later that the fire he used felt red and silver. He glanced back at the uniformed officer behind him, and shook his head minutely, the screwdriver still pointed at Flyndre.

"You’re going to let us out of this vehicle," he said. "We are going into the woods. When I’m a safe distance out, I’ll send the boy back to you, and he can go to Skjolden and get his inoculant, and have a story to tell his grandchildren. Sound good to you, Flyndre?"

"Sounds good," Flyndre said in a small voice.

The officer’s voice was flat. "We can’t let you into the woods, sir."

Bloody hell. Now what? "Then," he said, to buy time, "it seems we are at an impasse, gentlemen."

"If you hurt that kid, it’ll be the last thing you do," the officer at Flyndre’s window growled.

A howl split the air. Officers dove away as projectiles thudded against the side of the truck. Bård pulled Flyndre down below the level of the windows as the interior lit up in stuttering white flashes.

"Come on," Flyndre whispered, and opened his door.

"What are you doing?" Bård hissed.

Flyndre didn’t answer in words, but spilled out onto the ground with a soft grunt. His hand came up and beckoned for Bård to follow him.

Bård edged out of the truck, landing hard on the packed snow of the road. The officer who had been questioning him was crouched a few feet away with his eyes closed against the harsh flickering light, dodging missiles that came from several angles and brandishing a weapon that was not, mercifully, the tiny crossbow the dálki used to fire elfshot. 

Something exploded against the hood, and Bård got between the fragments and Flyndre. The road was all in shadow now, but he stifled a laugh when he saw what it was: a snowball. Dark shapes were in the little copses on either side of the road, and they were throwing snowballs. 

The howling and the strobing had intensified at about the same moment that Bård and Flyndre hit the ground. They used the resulting confusion to crawl through the grainy snow, on knees and elbows, to a stand of denuded but dense birch trees on the east side of the road. There was a stream on the other side of the trees, and they followed it, keeping low, until it narrowed enough for them to jump across. Almost. Bård slipped and put a foot in, but his boots were good, and laced tightly enough that the water didn't make it through.

The disturbance didn't extend this far. Bård shoved his red knit cap in his pocket. As they covered ground, quickly and quietly and carefully, he pulled out his mittens and stared at them in consternation. His hands were already red with cold, but the mittens had fluorescent green stripes on the backs. Finally, he hit upon the idea of putting them on inside out. 

They found better cover behind a large pine tree. Bård took off his jacket and put that on inside out too, so that all that was visible was the black lining. 

"That doesn't work," Flyndre scoffed.

"What now?"

"Wearing your clothes inside out to avoid fairies."

"That's easy for you to say," Bård said. "You're wearing khaki; I've got reflective tape on my shoulders." 

"Oh. Well. Good job distracting them, anyway," Flyndre said. 

"I thought that was you!"

"Not me."

From the direction of the road, there were shouts. Through the branches Bård counted five not-really-dálki officers. One opened up a cell phone, shook it a few times, and put it back before turning back to the group. 

Ducking low, stepping as lightly as possible, Bård and Flyndre ran through snow-covered underbrush to a place where a dip in the ground and a stand of conifers made them less visible. The valley was deep in shadow by now. Bård thought he heard the sounds of pursuit, quieter than he would have expected but unmistakable, but when he dared to glance back, three of the officers were still on the road and two of them were blundering around the creek.

There was a soft noise that came from everywhere, and nowhere. Fur-cloaked women appeared from behind the trees on all sides of them. 

Flyndre whimpered, and backed up against Bård, who put a protective arm around the boy. He held out both hands, palms up, to show that he meant no harm. He remembered Vegard’s stories, and thought he knew who he was dealing with. "Hulderfolk," he said, and the moment he said it, Flyndre seemed to relax.

One huldra stepped forward. If hulderfolk aged like humans, she was perhaps in her forties or fifties. Her brown eyes were piercing. She extended her hands. Flyndre backed away with a little bow, and Bård took them. They were strong and callused. Then a tufted tail came up from inside the robe and, ever so lightly, switched his cheek. 

Bård understood that he and Flyndre were under her protection, and that of her sisters. Not only had she made the promise to Perle, to look after her only grandson, but she and the other hulderfolk had also been urged by their sister--the thought was marked by hesitation, and flavoured with pity and disapproval and amused indulgence--to be on the lookout for the second Ylvisåker. Another switch told him that she had suspected something like the checkpoint might happen, given the ever-expanding bubble of chaos and paranoia around Jotunheimen, but that they would get Flyndre to Skjolden. Yet another said that she would conduct him, Bård, to the town where they’d last got word that Vegard was set up.

"Thank you," he said in a near-whisper, dipping his head in a way that he hoped conveyed respect. "Um... do you understand Norwegian?"

She nodded, and turned away abruptly, motioning for them to follow. As they walked, the other hulderfolk keeping pace, she seemed to scatter something behind her. Bård thought he might see magic if he activated the extra level of glamour detection that Kai had built into his contacts, but whistling at this point was probably counterproductive.

They headed for Heimste Breierindsgjelet, the slope of which rose in front of them. Bård wasn’t sure what they were going to do when they got there; trees crawled only halfway up its sides. But he pressed on, sneaking reassuring glances at Flyndre.

As the ground rose, Bård was able to look back and see that the the elves were still there, clustered around a car that was painted with black and yellow stripes and a shield insignia. They were getting something out of the trunk. He tentatively touched the lead huldra’s shoulder, and pointed back. Her face fell and her mouth tightened, but she nodded, and changed their course.

Abruptly, she made another scattering motion, this one different from the first: instead of sowing deeper glamour behind her, she was motioning for her compatriots to go away, get to safety. He was both alarmed and heartened to see the stubborn shaking of their heads, the whip of tails that he could decipher even without their touch. But he said, softly, "Someone, please get the child away at least."

One huldra nodded and took the boy’s arm. Flyndre shook her away. "I’m not leaving Bård."

The lead huldra’s lips compressed, but it was too late for anything else. She motioned them all down, then, and Bård saw the other huldra seize Flyndre and shove him under her cloak before the leader similarly enveloped him and forced him to the ground.

The first thing Bård noticed was that, although he’d seen enough while they were walking to suspect it, he could now confirm that under the cloak she was naked. But from what Vegard had said, that was just how they rolled. He took a moment to hope that Flyndre was conducting himself well, but upon a moment’s reflection, he realized that the boy was even better equipped to handle casual female nudity than he was. 

The second thing he noticed, with a sinking feeling, was the unmistakable whine of gadflies, the small, light, hoverbike-like craft that the magical community used to travel off-road. They were approaching very quickly. 

A switch of his protector’s tail told him that she thought she’d seen glamour disruptors in the back of that car, and the best defense now was to stay absolutely still. Bård curled up, trusting that she’d gotten all of him under the cloak, that not a shoelace showed. 

The gadfly engines slowed, whirring by very close, and Bård was quite sure that he could have reached out and touched one. 

A noise like a breaking guitar string split the air, and then the screaming began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: The Police's "Synchronicity I" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsKz1FBPTxc


	29. Low

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Casualties / The enclave / The vigil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for injuries.

The huldra clutched Bård close, forcing him to stay down. One of her sisters had just died, a switch said as she pinned him to the ground. Bård was _not_ going to make that sacrifice a vain one.

There was some sort of resistance going on. Bård heard more screams, and men’s shouts, and noises like the lighting of matches. He felt a pressure build in his chest and his sinuses, not the vacuum of panic, but a calm red and silver fury.

It apparently became all too much for both of them at the same time. He and the huldra rolled away from each other, and she flung out a gesture that made two of the men drop bonelessly, while Bård threw a ball of light at a gadfly and made it explode, throwing its rider clear. Another rider trained his weapon. Bård grinned, and heated the cylinder until the man threw it away with a little cry and knelt to plunge his hand into the snow. One of the hulderfolk, her face and one arm sheeted with blood, kicked the officer in the chin as she passed by, before she herself wavered and collapsed.

The noise of the gadflies was gone. Now there were only the noises of people in pain.

Bård knelt by one of the cloaks still mounded on the ground. It had charred holes in it. "It’s just Bård the human," he soothed as he turned the edge back.

This huldra was younger and had gone very pale, her eyes enormous with pain. When she was uncovered she let out a wail. Her shoulder and a lot of her side were red, and he saw that in peeling away the cloak, he had taken her skin with it. "Oh god," he said, falling back on his heels. "Somebody!"

The movement behind him was _wrong_ , and he spun and used a bolt of magic to knock back one of the officers. He heard the man land heavily on the snow, cry out once, and fall silent.

Two hulderfolk knelt by the injured one, then, and shooed Bård away. He went to another cloak, and this time he was very careful about peeling it back. 

The huldra underneath was unresponsive, with a massive burn on her abdomen. Next to her huddled Flyndre, grey and shaking, his coat charred and falling away from his body, one hand burned black.

"I tried, Bård," he said, with a small smile.

"Listen to me, Flyndre. You’re going to be okay; you just have to hang on." He found Flyndre’s good hand, and held it, letting their fingers entwine. "Stay with us."

He thought, suddenly, that this was what it had been like for Vegard. He thought he’d understood before, but now he knew: of course his brother couldn’t have chosen other than he had; it was as simple as stepping out of the path of an oncoming train. Bård thought back to the structure he’d seen Perle build in his mind, and tried to build it for Flyndre. 

A huldra shoved him aside, and switched him with her tail. She knew how to handle both of them. He should go back to her sister.

"I’ve got to go, Flyndre, but you hang in there. They’re gonna take care of you." Bård got to his feet, looking here and there for other ways he could be of use. But the first huldra beckoned to him, and when he got close, she told him that he should grab a gadfly and one of their weapons. The hulderfolk would show him the way through the mountains, and then he would have to go on alone while they tended the wounded and the dead.

"This is my fault," he said quietly, unable to keep the catch out of his voice. "I want to help."

She asked him, then, how refined his memory-magic was. Could he use it to heal, or to bear loads?

"I’ll do whatever I can," he said. "But... memory-magic?"

She made a face, as if to say _Oh_ that’s _how it is_. She told him that he should find as many of the gadflies as he could. The handful of uninjured hulderfolk could use them to ferry the others to the enclave.

One of the officers was dead, one was unconscious, one was dazed, one had broken an arm and one leg, and another was saying in a soft shocked voice that he couldn’t move his legs. Bård moved among them, disarming them. "You’re a traitor to your own kind," the one with the broken limbs babbled. "You think the Dissolution will spare humanity if you help it along?"

"You shot unarmed women and a child," Bård said. 

"Don’t you get it? In magic there’s no such thing as unarmed. Don’t let them make themselves out to be victims. Everyone’s got power, boy."

"Yeah?" Bård said. "Not my brother." He looked at the dazed man’s pupils. "Get him to a hospital."

" _How?_ "

“I’ll ask the--”

“What, your little cow friends, so they can shake weeds at him? Don’t bother.” 

Bård shrugged, and turned away. Out of five gadflies, he was able to salvage three. When he suggested that all three of them be used to transport the injured, and someone could come back for him, the lead huldra told him that leaving him out here was unacceptable; that they couldn't take everyone back anyway, and if he was out here the others would be sitting ducks.

He saw the wisdom in this, and returned to the one dazed elf, who slurred curses at him. Now he tried again to do what Perle had done for him last night. He couldn't remember what she'd said, and didn't know whether it was an incantation or a formality, but he placed his thumb on the elf's forehead and sang a bit of "I Shot the Sheriff," and used his magic to sculpt an approximation of the blossoming structure he'd seen in his own mind. He was aware that his song choice was probably in poor taste, and he didn’t know if he was successful or not, but the elf's eyes, with their mismatched pupils, slid closed. He’d tried, anyway. 

The huldra in charge clapped her hands at him. Triage had been accomplished, she told him when he was close enough for her tail to reach him. Eight of them were either uninjured, or would at least be all right until they could send help, and these would stay. The two hulderfolk with the worst injuries, Flyndre, and another huldra who could sit but not walk would be accompanying Bård and herself. He scrambled onto a gadfly. Two of the relatively uninjured hulderfolk positioned a cloaked, groaning, barely conscious huldra on the gadfly in front of him, so that he had his arms around her to pilot the little vehicle. 

"I'm afraid of jostling her," he confessed as he powered up the magical engine. 

A limp tail peeked out from under the cloak and brushed him feebly. The sooner he got her to a hospital, the sooner she'd be out of pain. 

Fortunately, a gadfly was the smoothest of rides. Weaving through the trees, he followed the others up the mountainside and around, and through a glamoured cave entrance. He fumbled to activate the lights on his gadfly before the darkness was complete and he lost sight of the controls. 

Switchbacks took him down and down and down. The air grew a touch warmer.

They rode in a silence broken only by the occasional moans of the injured. Three of them here. More out there. At least one dead. And Flyndre. Bård felt a great weight pressing in on him. At least some of it was his awareness of tens of millions of tonnes of rock around him, but some of it was the weight of what had happened because of him. He let himself cry. He probably wasn’t going to get another chance soon.

He tried to be quiet about it, but the lead huldra pulled up beside him, her own cheeks wet. Flyndre was slumped in her arms, very white and very still. Her tail lashed Bård and told him that the boy had been strong enough for a standard spelled sleep, that he was in no pain right now. He would be some time healing, and he would probably lose his hand, but he was going to live.

"His hand," Bård said softly, with a shudder that made the huldra in front of him whimper. "Sorry, I’m so sorry," he whispered to her. Christ, he thought as fresh tears ran down his cheeks, he couldn’t even move without hurting someone. "What... what about the girl who died?"

The next switch didn’t ask him which one, and that was a mercy, anyway. Instead it told him about a young woman who was shy at first but hiliarious when she trusted you; who was good with her hands, and could fix all manner of machines; who was a bit rubbish at children, but very kind to the elderly; who had volunteered for the party checking on Flyndre because the shieldbearers’ interference was playing havoc with her machines and she was at a loss for things to do.

"Did she have a name?" Bård asked quietly.

Names, she told him, were not a thing that hulderfolk did. With the exception of her sister from the east. And underneath that: to reduce a person, a whole, beautiful person to a handful of brayed syllables that could be spoken from afar, that could be spoken by total strangers, that could be used to command or abuse or curse, was strange and perverse to them.

"I'm so sorry," Bård said. "I didn't want anyone to get hurt."

The tail hit him a little harder this time. Did he think this was new? All just for him? This state of affairs had gone on for eight years now, getting a little worse every year, and drastically worse in the past few weeks. The shieldbearers had started in Fleskedalen, putting up barriers, shooing out elves and Underjordiske alike, but the amount of territory they claimed grew, and the interference from what they had created had effectively cut this group of hulderfolk off from their sisters in the rest of the country. People were dying all the time, because they got lost or hurt and couldn't call for help; because they had complex medical conditions and travel had become unbelievably difficult; because the shieldbearers counted hulderfolk lives as worth nothing, and thought little of killing anyone who even approached the barriers. 

The next switch was gentler. Her sister from the east was the first huldra who'd come to the area in over two years. She said people were working on a way to get them out of this, but it needed the middle Ylvisåker brother. Not that any of them had known that by agreeing to look in on Flyndre, they would find Bård, but his likeness had been circulated, both by the hulderfolk in the area and the shieldbearers, so finding him was a nice bit of luck. 

"Yeah, luck," Bård echoed bitterly. He felt something turn over sluggishly in him, and turned to ask her what she'd meant about memory magic, but his peripheral vision showed him lights winking up ahead, and a paleness rising up in front of them, and the thought fled.

The cave had been widening as they rode. Now the way was barred by two massive wooden doors. The paths of their opening left grooves in the rock, but just now they were closed. They were carved with Yggdrasil, the world tree. Stylized hulderfolk were playing hide-and-seek in its branches, plucking its massive fruits, bathing in the streams at its base, sleeping in a pile below its roots. 

The lead huldra had pulled her gadfly right up to the gate, where a gong, its metal dull and grey, was mounted next to a hammer on a chain. Without dismounting, she reached out, took the hammer, and gave the gong a rap. The note it produced was higher and sweeter than Bård expected.

Two small panels slid aside--one at eye level and one at tail level. Moments later, the great doors swung open, and the gadflies were admitted.

Bård's first impressions were of a dimly lit, multilevelled, permanent-looking settlement carved out of the rock. Hulderfolk converged on the gadflies, and gentle hands bore his passenger away. He dismounted, and someone took the gadfly, started it up, and was off like a shot, back the way they'd come. He heard the others start up and take off as well. 

He followed the tide of people, trying to catch a glimpse of Flyndre. Along the way, he saw curtained stone arches, children playing a game that made light rain from the air, and a reindeer on a leash. One thing raised a smile from him, even in his heartsick condition: a chalked mural of grey-suited businesspeople frolicking through the streets of Oslo. Two of them were astride trams and apparently jousting, using their umbrellas as lances and their briefcases as shields.

The party was met by hulderfolk with stretchers. One woman cocked her head at him; he smiled tightly and shook his head. "I’m okay, thanks." But the four stretchers made it easy to find Flyndre, and Bård hurried to the boy’s side as quickly as he could without shoving. Flyndre was chalky, his good arm at his side, the burned one laid over his chest, and although his eyes were closed, every time the stretcher jostled he sucked in air and his head rolled from side to side.

They took the injured through a low, wide curtained arch with smooth sides. On the other side, the room was brilliantly lit, busy, and outfitted with equipment.

One of the stretcher-bearers, her hair a fluffy red cloud, her skin alabaster, glanced back and whapped him with her tail. He couldn’t go on; he should rather see to his own needs, and they would call him when the boy was fit for visitors.

Bård stopped short, and watched them go on. They laid the stretcher right on top of a cot, and simply pulled the handles out of their loops, and stood them against the wall. Blue light sheeted down over the cot momentarily. Of course. Sterilization. 

One stayed waiting by Flyndre. The others hid their hair under white caps, and started putting on blue smocks. The huldra who’d told him to go glanced back, and he shrank a little, but she only made a shooing motion. 

He turned and went back into the darkness. On the other side of the arch, he leaned back against the wall, and breathed, feeling profoundly alone.

A tail touched his wrist. The huldra who had led the expedition--he didn’t even need to see her to recognize the flavour of her thoughts now--had wondered where he’d gotten to. She’d hoped to outfit him quickly and send him on his way, but they were using all three gadflies to ferry the injured back, and she couldn’t blame them. So he might as well relax for a bit. Eat something. She was due for a meal too.

All of this had taken an instant to convey. Bård felt loud and clumsy, trying to put his thoughts into words. "Thank you. I’m honoured that you would want to take the time. But I don’t think I can eat."

Her reply was flavoured with amusement. Despite her position in the expedition, she was just a communications specialist, dreading the e-mail she was going to have to send to her old school friend. But he really should eat. He had a journey ahead of him.

Bård let her lead him through another arch, to a wide, hot, humid area that seemed to serve as a kitchen and cafeteria. There was a great cauldron in the centre, surrounded by a railing, with a recess on one side. Tables circled the cauldron, with hulderfolk and others who didn’t seem to be shaped quite the same way chopping, kneading, mixing, seasoning. Bushel baskets of vegetables stood at their feet. Every so often, someone would walk down to the recess with a tray of raw baked goods, or emerge with a tray of fresh ones. It looked busy and organized. It smelled delicious.

Groups of hulderfolk and others sat on the floor, eating. Some had tails intertwined; some were animatedly signing. He thought he heard, here and there, the murmur of voices, but there was nothing like the buzz he would expect from a group this size anywhere else. The rock formed a shelf around the room too, looking natural in some places and carved in others, so people had the option of not sitting on the floor. 

The line for food moved very fast, perhaps because nobody ordered and nobody paid: they just took one of the many bowls or plates arrayed on the table. Bård took a bowl of stew. He was going to leave the bread next to it, but a quick switch told him that was the closest thing he’d get to a spoon, so he took it.

They sat on the shelf to eat. Bård took off his coat and, following the example of his host, tipped his bowl up to his lips and drank as much as he could. It was vegetarian, with nuts in it. Nowhere near as good as it had smelled. His stomach was still twisting with anxiety, but lunch at the diner had been two hours ago and he would have a long way to go. He thought of Flyndre, jabbering about his friends and how funny and brash and careless they were, gesturing animatedly at him with a French fry, and his throat constricted. He lowered his bowl and leaned against the rock, wishing Vegard was there to breathe with him. 

He saw the huldra looking at him with concern. Part of him wished fervently for a tail, so he could tell her how he felt without having to articulate it. Another part of him didn’t want to burden anyone else. "I have a daughter his age," he settled for saying. 

She patted his knee. Her tail touched his wrist, and assured him that Flyndre would be fine. He was young. He would bounce back. 

Bård thought, suddenly, of Bertolt Meyer. "When he’s better, I can put him in touch with someone who does prosthetics. Very advanced. He’d be able to make hand gestures using his phone, and everything."

She was sure his family would be touched by his desire to help, but magical prosthetics would more than suit the boy’s needs. 

"Oh. Well... I’ll pay for it, then. I... I have to do _something _." His hands shook as he held the stew.__

__She put her own bowl down, and enveloped him in a tight hug. He couldn’t stop a couple of shuddering sobs from escaping before he got himself back under control and drew away. The sea had pulped the kleenex zippered into his jacket pockets, and the selkies’ dryer had turned it into a lumpy concrete mass, but it was the best thing he had._ _

__Her tail lay across his wrist, and he saw, underneath the soothing nonsense she was sending his way, what she thought of him: weak, blundering, isolated, needing technology to augment his own feeble magic. She kept having to remind herself that probably he was quite intelligent._ _

__He ate the rest of the stew, and sopped it up with the bread. Lichen bread. "This is what Vegard and I had in Varggrav," he found himself telling her, tearing it into tiny bits as he nibbled it. "I never thought I’d be nostalgic for that time. We didn’t know if we’d live another day." Vegard had been with him, whole. He hadn't even committed any crime yet. And Flyndre had had two hands and had never even heard of Bård Ylvisåker, and that was just the way it should have stayed._ _

__They put their bowls and plates on one of the tables set aside for that purpose. Bård asked about paying, digging his wallet out of the coat in his arms even as he wondered if they would take kroner, and she laughed. She worked for an hour every day in the kitchen--sometimes more, if she had a problem she was working through, because kneading bread was relaxing--and when most of them were doing that when they could, everything ran smoothly._ _

__"Thank you for the meal, and the company," he said. "I think I really want to see Flyndre, now, if I can."_ _

__And she had a very uncomfortable e-mail to compose. She'd be by to check on him later. With a final touch of his shoulder, she was off, into one of the side chambers._ _

__After a side trip to a reasonably modern public washroom, Bård wandered into the hospital area, trying to catch someone's eye, but everyone was busy. He found Flyndre in bed. The boy's eyes were closed, and he was still very pale. His chest was swathed in bandages, and his right arm ended in a bandaged stump. Bård sat down carefully in a chair by the bed, because if he didn't, he was going to fall._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Yngwie Malmsteen's "Black Star" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blNQZc84Q5c


	30. The Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blending in with humans #8: the acquisition of sandwiches / No bars / The garden of memory / "Act afraid."

"Are you sure?" Finn said. He was seated facing Brynjar, a hand poised at his temple.

"I are sure," Brynjar said, wearily.

The spell was a gentle one, readily breakable if it hurt, or if he panicked, or if he found for any reason that he really, really needed to see. All of Finn's spells were gentle. The grey eye's vision slowly contracted to a pinpoint, and stayed that way.

"How is that?" Finn asked, giving Brynjar’s head a final pat before lowering his hands.

Brynjar took a couple of deep breaths. "A great relief, Finn. Thank you." His head was still thudding, but at least the noise was much diminished. He looked around a hotel room that suddenly made sense. "Are Sleipnir fed?"

"She... _is_."

Brynjar turned gingerly, and looked at himself in the mirror. The grey eye was a little cloudy, but that was all. 

“I didn’t want to make you super conspicuous, but I didn’t want people to expect you to be able to see out of it,” Finn explained.

"It are good work, Finn. Learned you anything in town?"

Finn shook his head. Then he quirked his mouth and made a _comme-ci comme ça_ gesture. "Nothing about Vegard. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But the magical population’s exploded in the last decade. The woman at the sandwich shop said our quarter used to consist of a few thousand svartalfar who have been here for ages. The newcomers are about two-thirds bright, and they all seem to work for the same outfit--Kilpi Security. Most of the houses are new, and not particularly posh. So middle-class. Oh, and radio and mobile phone and wi-fi signals have been useless for years. It’s land lines or nothing. The town receives compensation for it."

"That are consistent with what we know." Brynjar thought about sandwiches to see what would happen to his stomach, and the reaction was pleasantly neutral. 

"When we were the only two in the shop, she took her coffee and came out from behind the counter and talked to me. Brought me one too. She said there are health effects no one talks about. The new people don’t really have a lot of kids, but the old ones are seeing a huge hike in birth defects like Faoinbara’s Sign, Froudianism, and Malignant Precocity. Her friend’s daughter is a full-blooded svartalfr, of course, and she has a horn. Right in the middle of her forehead. Among the adults, lots of migraines, poor sleep, portents, temporal lobe seizures, nausea, vertigo, spiritual experiences, and sudden attacks of clairvoyance or intense telepathy."

"Worsifying drastically in the past few weeks?" Brynjar guessed. He got to his feet, feeling wobbly but better than he had. Waving Finn back into his chair, he filled a cup with water, put a teabag in, and tried to make it boil. He didn’t expect it to work--he had come to associate monocular vision with having little or no magic--but Finn had left everything else in place. The atoms vibrated gratifyingly, and steam rose from the cup. 

"Much worse," Finn agreed. "They’ve closed the school. She says the town refuses to answer questions or grant them a meeting to talk about it. Won’t even let them use the meeting space in the library to talk about it amongst themselves. They’re on the verge of asking humans for permission to use their community centre."

Brynjar nodded. He doctored his tea, and returned to the armchair, sipping thoughtfully. "The anchor web are hanging by a thread, then. Vegard have done his job. It remains only for Bård to do his."

"Anchor web," Finn echoed. "Right, you guys were about to fill me in when... when Bård..."

"Be easy," Brynjar said, angling his head until the pinpoint of vision on his blind side showed him his cousin. It aggravated his headache, and he sat back, eyes shut. "He approacheth, distraught but whole. I will telling you what I know of our quest, and then I will devourify one of those sandwiches, and then I must sleep."

***

Long later, while Brynjar snored gently on the other side of the room, Finn sat down on his own bed. He pulled out his phone, thinking it would be nice to call Melly and check in, but where there should be service bars, he saw only a little red exclamation point in a triangle. He was about to try anyway when he thought about the traceability of mobile phone signals, and picked up the romance novel he’d brought, Cedar Nissen’s _Gnome Man’s Land_ , instead.

***

Bård didn't know how long he'd been sitting there, amidst the hospital’s bright light and cobbled-together equipment, when a tail touched him. The gadflies were back, and one had been outfitted for him and was ready to go.

"Thanks," he said, not taking his eyes off Flyndre's sleeping face. Bård knew that he was a poor substitute for family, but he didn't want the kid to wake up alone and hurting in a strange place. 

The next hit was a solid _whap_ against his cheek. It stung a little, and Bård's head snapped up. The huldra who stood in front of him was someone he'd never seen before. Her hair was white, her skin amber. She represented the enclave. Bård had been granted passage, not sanctuary. He was to go immediately.

The anguish must have shown on his face, because when she hit him again--more gently this time--she said that they had no intention of waking the boy before his family got here. Bård was wanted in Øvre Årdal, the boy had been hurt trying to get him there, and the best thing he could do for any of them was to join the people trying to fix this.

He took a long last look at Flyndre, and got to his feet, pulling on his coat. "I'm sorry, buddy. For everything." He took the boy's remaining hand in his own, and brushed the cold knuckles against his lips before setting the hand back in place and following the white-haired huldra out. 

The other huldra, the expedition leader, his dinner companion, fell in step with him as he emerged from the hospital. "They're kicking me out," he told her, bleakly.

She ruffled his hair, and switched him. Of course they understood that he couldn't in good conscience leave Flyndre. So, they were taking his conscience out of the equation. 

The gadfly was waiting for him at the eastern entrance to the enclave. There were saddlebags, and a GPS fitted onto the handlebars, and a helmet.

The white-haired huldra put her hands on his head and told him to go well, with the blessings of the enclave. She handed him a couple of sheets of paper. His dinner companion hugged him, and told him to be safe and careful, and to give their best to their sister from the east. "Thank you," he said. "For everything." Then he started up the gadfly and eased it forward into the tunnel. When he turned back to wave, the great doors were nearly closed. 

With a shrug, he sped up a little. The GPS wasn’t receiving a satellite signal, but when he unfolded the sheaf of papers, the little screen gave off enough light for him to read printed directions and a map.

In ten minutes, he felt fresh, cold air on his face. He flipped his coat collar up and his visor down. An opening loomed, and then he was in the open air, gliding down the eastern slope of what the sheaf of papers said was Myrhaugsnipa. 

He'd done this before, ridden a gadfly out of the mountain tunnels and into the sweet night air. That time, he'd been exhausted, but surrounded by friends, secure in the knowledge that the world was safe, and his soundly sleeping big brother had been slumped in front of him. Bård had had to go slow to keep Vegard from tumbling right off, and he'd thought that was a bit odd because Vegard was not a particularly sound sleeper, but the flicker of concern he'd felt would take days to develop into full-blown worry.

Now he momentarily took a hand holding the papers off the handlebars altogether and pressed his arm to his chest, hugging a brother who wasn’t there anymore. Then he nudged the gadfly’s speed up. Out of the tunnels, he felt safe going faster. The route on the paper took him right across the mountains, instead of around them, and following this route his travel time would be an hour and a half. He would be in Øvre Årdal by 22.00.

The night was an overcast one, and his way was lit only by the headlight on the front of the gadfly and the feeble light of the GPS screen, which still had not found a signal. He was still getting odd flickers of déjà vu, and these he thought had nothing to do with last year: speeding along in the snow under cover of darkness, one eye on the square display of the GPS in front of him, half sick with worry for Vegard.

The memory remained tantalizingly out of reach for a very long time. He was across the frozen waters of a lake the map called Veitastrondavatnet and headed up the side of Krokberg before it came to him: Hardangervidda, the eve of the Winter Solstice, 2007. He didn't _remember_ remember it, but a snowmobile and a sunrise and Vegard and a profound sense of relief were all fixed very firmly in his mind, and even if the evidence was all circumstantial, it felt right. 

Vegard remembered, of course, and he’d told Bård. Vegard remembered all of it now. Bård still had only fragments, even though he was the one who had trained his memory. It still didn't seem fair.

But the huldra had said he had memory magic.

The thing that had filled him on the side of Heimste Breierindsgjelet, that had momentarily let him shake off spells and make a weapon too hot to hold and knock back a grown elf, didn't _feel_ like memory. It had felt like rage, flowing in from a place where he kept it in abeyance. Curious, though, keeping a careful eye on the terrain in front of him, he called up the walk from his childhood home to school in his mind's eye. Here was the memory he was so proud of, with scraps of song lyrics hung on every fencepost and fire hydrant. What could he do with this? 

A flickering, a shimmering, a sense of the uncanny drew his mind's eye upward, and then he saw exactly what the huldra had been talking about. When he'd been angry about Dr. Kurael's death, he'd planted his revenge at the base of the old oak tree in front of the school. 

It had grown. 

The oak tree's bark had darkened, toughened, and was shot through with glimmers of red like hot coals. Its foliage was red and silver fire. When he drew near to it, he could feel something like electricity running through it. _This_ warranted a good long look when he had some down time. For now, though, he could only marvel at it with half his attention, while the rest was on the path before him. 

Crossing Lustrafjorden was the most nerve-wracking: he knew the gadfly could hover above any surface, and he had never fallen off one, but he couldn't shake the idea that one false move would send him into the frigid water, and if that happened again he didn't think his luck was going to hold. But skirting the fjord would take him hours out of his way. In the end, he took it at top speed, and was across in five seconds, but it was a tense five seconds. 

He was descending the slope of Surnasetnosi--he had to swallow several times to equalize the pressure in his eardrums--when they came for him. 

First he heard the helicopter, and he had a little fight with himself over whether he was being paranoid about a standard mountain patrol. But when it crested the top of Ingebjørgsfjellet, and the lights of more gadflies appeared, converging, he knew this was for him.

" _Just beat it_ ," he sang under his breath, and tried to stall the engine of one of the gadflies. He might have heard it hiccup. Hard to tell. 

He thought of Flyndre’s bandaged stump and Vegard’s half-closed glassy eyes. Pressure built in his throat and behind his ribs. Brynjar’s bruised half-slack face. Kind and reassuring Dr. Kurael. A field of injured hulderfolk. 

Bård kicked the gadfly to a halt. He spread his hands, and tapped into the growing tension he felt, and let power fill him. 

With a sweeping motion of his hand, he killed six gadfly engines at once, sending their riders tumbling into the snow. He wasn’t sure the gesture was necessary, but it felt good.

The helicopter descended towards him. In their lights he couldn’t see anything, but he was sure they had weapons trained on him. Recalling what he'd seen in Bjarte's textbooks, he clenched his fist and stopped the tail rotor, sending the helicopter into a slow spin to spoil their aim. Then he flung out a hand, and made the power shaft in the helicopter's turbine engine slow... slow... slow... stop. The helicopter landed hard, facing away from him. 

Bård thought of going after their guns, but stopping the shaft had taxed him, and something in the back of his mind felt loose and sore and a little knocky. Instead, he thumbed the gadfly to life and left the valley at top speed. One thing about it: with the interference knocking out communications, there was no way for them to sound the alarm. By the time they got in touch with their superiors, he would be long gone.

***

Less than an hour later, he found himself looking out over the lights of the village of Årdalstangen. He cut the sound and light on the gadfly, and eased it sluggishly but silently down the mountain. Then he waited in the trees until he could be sure that the roads were deserted, and took the little vehicle across the bridge over the Hæreidselvi. From there, the map guided him to Riksveg 53.

The last part of the ride, over smooth, safe pavement, was in some ways the most nerve-wracking, even though he was able to travel over ground instead of through Steiggjetunnelen and Midnestunnelen. He would have liked to run parallel to the road the rest of the way, but there was a sheer rock face on one side of him most of the time and the waters of Årdalsvatnet on the other. Both times that he saw approaching headlights, he stopped the gadfly, killed the lights, and hunkered down on the other side of the guard rail with back pressed to the ground to conceal the reflective strips on his coat, until the other vehicle passed. He wasn't sure what ordinary humans would see of a gadfly, but he really didn't need _Se og Hør_ printing pictures of Bård Ylvisåker squatting in midair at eighty kilometres an hour. 

Øvre Årdal had grown in size and density since the last time he’d seen it. Then he thought of something, and popped out a contact lens. To his naked eye, it was the sleepy little town he knew, with sparse low buildings nestled in the valley, along the highway. With lenses in, though, it was several times bigger. Humans had the outskirts on the southern end, but further in, houses were positioned halfway up the mountains on either side, continuing for kilometres. 

He saw another car coming, and now he dismounted, took the gadfly in hand, and walked on the sidewalk, still following the map. He kept walking east through town, watching the architecture give way from good solid sensible wooden houses to squat hobbity cottages and whimsical Art Nouveau edifices and apartment buildings that seemed to be carved out of the mountains themselves. On the other side of the aluminum smelting plant, the magical part of the town began in earnest. Narrow streets snaked off from the highway, winding into the hills. The map asked him to follow one of the larger ones. 

The destination that the hulderfolk’s map led to was a shop on the ground floor of a two-storey building. It was open. Bård’s entrance triggered the sound of a silver bell.

It was a convenience store. After his ordeal and the cold and the dark, it felt like stepping back into his own world. Granted, amid the candies and crisps and stationery, some of the conveniences were bundles of twigs, vials of flower petals, waking potions, racks of cheaply made charms, and massive cylinders of something called Summoning Salt ("Up to 40% more secure than ordinary sodium chloride!"). The magazine rack had _Dagbladet_ , _Aftenposten_ , _Dag og Tid_ , _Time_ , _101 Dot-to-Dot Beginner Glyphs_ , _Utenomjordisk Skjønnhet_ , _Brighter Hearths and Bowers_ , and of course the _Alpha Chronicle_. Today’s headline was, "Experts: Nation Poised on the Brink of a Terrorist ATTACK! Are YOU ready?"

There were a couple of other people in the store, a teenaged svartalfr checking out the wall of sanitary products and an old tramp apparently trying to decide between several kinds of cured sausage, but the counter was free. "Hi!" Bård said to the shopkeeper. "Do you know where I’d be able to find a hotel?"

"Your best bet this time of night is a guesthouse called Spindelen og Kratt," she said. The mottled brown and green of her skin suggested that she was a dryad. "Follow this street to Høydevegen, on your right. Walk until you hit Eikenøttvegen, and if you turn right again, you should be able to see the sign."

"Thank you." He’d sleep tonight, and tomorrow, think about how to find and rescue Vegard. But he’d left the bag the selkies had given him in the truck. He was going to need a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and probably something to eat before he went to bed. The tramp had left the sausages without selecting anything, and was working his way to the front of the store, so Bård took his place at the cooler, and picked out some elgpølse and a package of cheese. He was contemplating a bag of baby carrots when a commotion made him turn.

The teenager was gone. The tramp was at the counter, arguing with the shopkeeper over something unintelligible. His tweed jacket, layered over three or four other jackets, was filthy, his hair and beard a wild tangle. The words he was saying didn’t make sense, but he was angry and getting angrier, gesturing wildly, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. He picked up a package of Tic-Tacs and threw them at the shopkeeper in disgust. They missed.

Bård put his purchases down and stepped out of the aisle. "Can I help?" he asked.

The tramp let out a little roar. For all his apparent clumsiness, he was _fast_. And now Bård was in his grip, one arm twisted behind his back in a way that didn’t really hurt right now but showed a lot of promise. There was a knife pressed to his throat. 

"What... what do you want?" Bård wavered. 

The tramp growled, and shoved him forward. If he got Bård out of the store, there would be no hope for him...

Bård lunged forward, and the knife dented the skin of his throat before suddenly pulling back a few inches. It was too dull to break the skin. And the tramp had still jerked it back.

Something happened, then, like an eye opening up in the back of his mind, opening on a searing pain that made his knees buckle. : _Act afraid._ :

Bård stopped struggling, and, pale and wide-eyed, let himself be dragged out of the shop and into a darkened alley. Vegard. The tramp with the wild hair and beard was Vegard. And if his physical appearance was shocking, his mind was a raw horror. 

"Okay to run?" Vegard whispered, sheathing the knife. Bård nodded mutely. They climbed a fence, and found themselves in another alley. Vegard grabbed his sleeve and tugged him from shadow to shadow, as running footsteps and the glow of witchlights reached the alley by the shop. Bård tried to make note of the twists and turns, but he was still reeling, and as shocked as he was by his brother's condition, he trusted him not to lead them astray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Airwave's "The Promise I Made" (featuring Jon O'Bir) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPU76_AdJdI


	31. Prisoners and Broken Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reunited / Sunglasses at night / The tail of Persille

Vegard knocked a complex pattern against the door of a tall and ramshackle house that needed paint, and was admitted to a room stuffed with clutter. He shepherded Bård inside. A naked young woman with brown hair stood behind the door. "Got him!" Vegard crowed as the woman pushed the door shut. She triple-locked it before casting some sort of spell over it. Vegard stood straighter, and a lot of the tension seemed to go out of him. "He was characteristically late, but right where your people said he’d be. Persille, this is my little brother Bård, the one I don't shut up about. Bård, this is Persille."

The sister from the east. The huldra with a name. Persille took Bård's hand and bowed over it. She didn’t touch him with her tail; in fact, he didn’t see her tail at all.

"I'm just going to take him upstairs. And tidy up. Finally. I won't be able to go out like this anymore."

"Pleased to meet you," Bård said with a little wave as he was drawn away, up a flight of stairs steep and dark enough to make him nervous, but narrow enough that he comforted himself with the thought that if he fell, he could just stick his elbows out and come to a halt. And this was good, because there were two flights of the bloody things.

The third floor landing was stuffed with stacked crates and lockboxes and papers tacked to the walls four deep. They had to walk in single file to the little door that Vegard indicated. He unlocked it and snapped on an ancient electric light, a single incandescent bulb dangling in the middle of the gable room. "This is mine," he said, quite unnecessarily. 

Where the rest of the house was cluttered and ill-kept, this room was a little oasis. The floor was hardwood that had been poorly maintained but lovingly restored. Vegard couldn’t have been here for very long, but he had whitewashed the slanted walls, and the frame of the little wooden twin bed, and the locked trunk at its foot. There was a wooden TV tray and a chair, painted white and artfully distressed. A rack held an array of clothing, all of it ill-fitting and shabby. 

An old enamel sign advertising soap hung up on one slanted wall, and a little balsa glider on a string dangled from the other. And above the TV tray, which appeared to serve Vegard as both a desk and a nightstand, there was tacked a family picture, taken on a summer's day: him and Helene and all the children, grinning into the camera. Bård looked from the picture to his brother now, dirty and unkempt, his beard and hair grey and scraggly, his fingernails bitten to the quick, his clothes stained and too big for him, and couldn’t stop the tears. 

"Oh, no no no no no no no," Vegard said, grabbing a kleenex from the TV tray. He dabbed at Bård's face. "Come on, come on, shhhhh, shhhhh." After another moment of fluttering, he enveloped Bård in a tight, brief hug. Bård braced himself for a smell that would no doubt turn his stomach, but Vegard didn't smell like unwashed flesh; he smelled like woodsmoke and coconut oil and the clean mineral scents of clay and earth. He should have known that Vegard wouldn't be able to tolerate being _really_ dirty for any length of time.

"You just look terrible," Bård said when they disengaged. 

"That's on purpose," Vegard said. "Only that won't work anymore, because everyone saw me kidnap you. Tell you what, I’ll grab a shower and a shave _right_ now. I have to anyway." 

"I don't just mean... this. What you look like. It's your whole mind. God, Vegard. It's... it's a ruin."

Vegard rolled his eyes. "Oh, yes. Tell me _all_ about that."

"If I'd known..."

"Then your behaviour might have tipped them off, my cover would be blown, you and our families would be in danger, and everything I gave up would have been in vain," Vegard finished brightly. Then he sobered. "I am sorry that I kept all this from you. Are... are you very angry?”

“No! You can even check.”

Vegard closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he let out a relieved sigh. “I still didn’t want to have to do it. But they're using prisoners to power this thing. Prisoners and broken gods. I have to try to stop them. And I figured you'd want to too."

"I do," Bård agreed. "Whoever did this to you, I want to, I want to... Tell me what we do."

"Well, we..." Vegard sighed in disgust. "The _first_ thing we do is, you sit tight here and I take a shower. I have to wash this gunk off anyway, and I think this beard will come off better if I soften it up first." He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the trunk, and handed Bård a sheaf of papers. "Read this while I’m gone." He grabbed clothes and a ragged but clean towel from the trunk, and left Bård to read.

When Vegard was out of the room, Bård sat down on the bed and opened the folder in front of him. First, though, he closed his eyes and groped for the link between them. Vegard's mind was a relief, even as it stung like a fresh burn. 

: _Gah! Bård, I'm on the toilet!_ :

: _Sorry._ : Bård looked down at the folder in front of him. Floor plans for something big and multistoreyed. He started committing them to memory, placing them on his route to school.

Ten minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and Bård found himself grinning. _That_ was a Vegard knock. "It’s your room."

Vegard was wearing black sweatpants and a white t-shirt. His hair coiled in damp dark curls around his neck. The grey was gone, except for the few strands he’d had before. The beard was gone, too, and the lower half of his face looked a little raw, but he was Vegard again.

There was still his mind, of course. To Bård the pain had subsided to a deep, persistent, grating ache, but he understood that this was Vegard's new normal, and that it had been worse, much worse. "Does it hurt? To have... For me to... ?"

Vegard quirked his mouth as he sat down crosslegged on the bed. "Only secondhand, from you. It's not bad. Are you okay with it?"

Tears sprang to Bård's eyes again. "It'd hurt more to be closed off again."

Vegard passed him another kleenex, and patted his arm, and indicated the sheaf of papers in the open folder. "The anchor web was hiding a big spell, right? This is where it's housed. It’s got to be a power sink; that's the only thing that makes sense, and everything I learn just makes it make more sense."

"Okay. Okay. What... who... do you know who’s behind this?"

Vegard grinned. "You're gonna love this."

"The Peace Division after all?"

Vegard wagged his head back and forth. "Alpha."

"Alpha? The _news_ organization?"

"Didn't Melantha wonder how they had such a stranglehold on public opinion?"

"Well yeah, but they do _news_. How did they start stealing people's magic?"

"Okay, get this," Vegard said, turning towards Bård, his eyes lighting up. "Eleven years ago, Alpha was bought out by Ardriel Morael, Lavinia Morael, and Chelsea Drake-Cambriel. Do you know the name? I’ll tell you. Unia Cambriel is the physicist who eliminated ninety-eight percent of the energy loss in the old design for an anchor web interface. Chelsea is her daughter. She's off in Tibet now, something to do with yaksha liberation, and the Moraels maintained a controlling interest in Alpha. With me so far?”

“So far,” Bård said.

“In, hmmmmmm, 2009, a company called Kilpi Security and Prevention approached the Magister of Conduct and Discipline, saying that it had a solution to all the prison overcrowding they were facing after the implementation of the first wave of new laws. It had a set of spells that, if applied, could make extracted magic _stay_ gone. All the dealings were conducted _in camera_ as part of the Peaceful Haven Act, but as part of the inquiry last year into what happened with us, the Peace Division made public a slice of their budget, and Kilpi Security and Prevention gets like seventeen percent of their independent contractor line item. That last part is what I found out in November. And then I got arrested."

"Nice coincidence," Bård observed.

"It took Mab's people weeks to trace all the shell companies and whatnot, but yes, Kilpi basically _is_ Alpha. Well, a division of Alpha. Kept absolutely separate. Directed by the Moraels. The administrative headquarters are in Ringebu, but this is where the magic happens. Literally."

Bård sat, frowning. "So Alpha gets the magic that Kilpi extracts from convicts."

"Some of it. And some of it maintains that bloody security web. And a lot of it just accumulates. And it’s not just convicts. I hadn’t put all this together in November, but they were in the file Finn gave me. They were Rán’s employers."

Bård had pieced this together already, but it was better to just let Vegard keep going. "That makes a lot of sense."

"You were right from the start: they cracked Brynjar to steal his magic."

"Christ." He struck off into new territory now. "And they use it to... you said they're using it to change public opinion?"

"Yeah. Kai says--well, I was talking to Kai in February, and I asked him as a theoretical thing, because at the time I wasn't sure but now I am. But he says that there are spells to impose feelings on someone, and he said it's way outside of his field but theoretically if you made the spell simple enough, you could amplify and broadcast it."

"Something like fear?"

"Easiest one," Vegard affirmed. 

"So... they broadcast fear. And they use the news to tell people what they should be afraid of." Bård's eyes went wide. "So they're more willing to get tough on crime. And sentence people to give up their magic. Bloody hell."

"It feeds itself," Vegard agreed. 

"How do we take it down?"

Vegard's smile was like sun breaking through clouds. "You have no idea how happy I am to hear that. After about three days I realized maybe the message wasn't even getting out, but the only way to be sure was a landline and we can’t count on anything being secure anymore, especially in this town. So we started looking for ideas how Persille and I could do it ourselves, but there’s no--did you bring Brynjar with you?"

"And Finn."

Some of the air seemed to go out of Vegard. He froze for a long moment and then turned away abruptly. With a snarl of frustration, he picked up a pen and threw it across the room.

"Vegard? What the hell?"

Vegard shook away from the hand Bård placed on his shoulder. He sat cross-legged by his pillow, his back to his brother, kneading his chest ferociously.

"I don't understand," Bård said. "He says he doesn't know what he did, and I sure as hell don’t."

"Melantha swore me to secrecy," Vegard said through his hand. 

"Whatever it was, Brynjar thought he was good enough to bring along."

Vegard rubbed his knees, and then his face, and then his arms. "It’s not anything he did. If it was I would have _said_ something. It’s not, it’s not about him being good enough. She asked me to stay away from him, she said because of his standing, and the scandal, and the show, and, like, I said okay, fine. Then I found out somebody threatened them. If Finn kept poking around the gods, trying to find out about Brynjar's group. Which is Kilpi. Which is Alpha. And when he didn’t stay away, they did hurt him."

"Why didn't you just tell him that? Vegard, he's been eating his heart out for months now!"

"Melantha didn't want him to know. She didn’t want me to say anything to anyone. Besides, I didn't think he would care about himself enough to listen to me."

"You're probably right," Bård admitted. Then he cuffed the back of Vegard's head. "I thought he was the one who'd ditched you. You _let_ me think it, too!"

"I _promised_ ," Vegard said crossly, rubbing the back of his head. 

"I gave him hell for thinking he could replace you. He thought he was replacing you _in jail_."

Vegard made a face. "I wouldn't do that to him. You know that. So he's here now?"

"Yeah."

"Is Melantha... safe?"

"She's got Jessalyn with her."

"Is she going to turn me into a badger when we get back?"

"Only if you get her fiancé killed."

Vegard turned around at this, grinning. "Bloody _hell_."

"We got separated in Runde," Bård said. "They should be here though. But a text isn’t likely to work, is it?" 

"No!" Vegard yelped. "No. Sorry. It won’t, and anyway Persille would skin me alive if I gave us away, even to them. We'll need a landline, something public. Can’t guarantee Kilpi won’t listen in, but it will leave our location a bit vague, anyway. Ugh, but I'll need to find a new disguise. You'll stay here tonight, right?"

Bård drew one knee up under his chin, and leaned against the sloping ceiling, shutting his eyes. Some hours later, tucked into this corner, he would doze off while listening to Vegard talk about the physics of magical containment, and Vegard, not willing to wake him, would examine and abandon the notion of dossing down on the floor, and instead scrunch up small and pull the blanket over both of them. Now, though, Bård laughed softly. "I'm nearly thirty-five. Feels a little embarrassing to be this relieved to be here with my big brother."

"No, I don't think so," Vegard said. "Because I'm nearly thirty-eight and twice as relieved to have you here, and I'm not embarrassed at all."

***

It was elevenish, and Finn’s sandwich had worn off long ago. Yesterday had been exhausting enough that he thought he might be able to sleep in spite of waking late today, but between his stomach gnawing at him and his brain jabbering that they’d lost both brothers and wasted a whole day, it was a lost cause.

Eventually, he pulled a pair of jeans on, and the snuggly burgundy cashmere sweater Melly’s mom had gotten him for Christmas. Brynjar looked fast asleep. As Finn was putting on his coat and boots, he laid a hand on Brynjar’s calf. "I’m going out," he said softly, expecting his brother to mutter some sort of acknowledgement and fall instantly back asleep.

Instead, Brynjar opened his eyes. "All right," he said through a yawn, levering himself into a sitting position. "Gives me two minutes."

"You can sleep. I just need something to eat."

"Ah, yes, sends a Vegard Ylvisåker lookalike alone into a town where Vegard hath worked undercover to dismantle the town’s primary industry. You will be grated, chopped, ground, stirred, puréed, whipped, mixed, blended, liquefied, and frappéd."

"How do you feel?" Finn asked, reaching for the lamp.

Brynjar had grabbed a bag and unzipped it, and was pawing through the contents. "Please, no light. I are muchly improved, but my head threatens that light will end our uneasy truce."

"Okay. It’s just, you’ve got Bård’s bag."

Brynjar paused in his rummaging, but only for a moment. "I will cease to look for my sweatpants, then." He drew out a pair of faded blue jeans. "We are the same sizing, anyway. Aha! Usefulness."

Brynjar had made a good point, and while he put on Bård’s clothes, Finn put on his glasses, and tucked his hair under one of his berets. 

Out in the hall, Finn surveyed the job they’d done, dressing in the dark. He had to turn his sweater around. Brynjar was wearing a pair of Bård’s sunglasses.

" _I wear my sunglasses at night,_ " Finn sang teasingly.

" _So I can, so I can stop my migraine screwing with my eyes,_ " Brynjar sang back, limping down the corridor.

The desk clerk gave them directions to a store that would be open this time of night. Brynjar took his sunglasses off and put them in his pocket when they got out of the building, although he still shied away from streetlights, shielding his eyes. 

The walk was uneventful. The hour approached 23.00, and the streets were nearly deserted. A dálki car slowed as it passed, but kept going.

The store was still open, and brightly lit. Finn had his hand on the door when he realized that he was alone. Well, he understood Brynjar not wanting to go in. He backtracked, and found Brynjar staring at a gadfly leaning up against the stone wall outside. "Not secured," Finn observed. "Trusting soul."

"Dálki model," Brynjar said. " _Not_ a dálki paint job." He ran his thumb over a small shield between the handle bars, and then gestured to the polished wooden helmet that dangled from a handlebar, and leather saddlebags puddled on the ground. These was clearly of Underjordiske design, and not the fake kind they sold at Mørkedypet. " _Definitefully_ not dálki accoutrements. I... I sees only a pinpoint now, but it haves _him_ in it." They shared a long look. 

Finn went into the store. The only person inside was an older dryad behind the counter. He beamed at her, but of course she wouldn’t recognize him anymore. "Hi there! You know, you’ve got a stray gadfly parked outside."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, gods, it must be his. I should call the dálki back."

"Whose? He should secure it."

"Least of _his_ problems," she said. "One of my customers. He got dragged out of here about an hour ago."

"Oh, my," Finn said, trying to make his dread sound more like polite dismay.

"A tramp who’d been sort of lurking in here all evening started causing trouble, and this other guy stepped in. To protect me, bless ‘im. The tramp put a knife to his throat, and--didn't hurt him, didn't seem to want to hurt him. Took him outside, though, and we couldn't find him. He struggled at little at first, but then he settled right down and I guess did what the guy wanted. I took some people and had a look, but there was no trace. The dálki are looking, they say, but they’re generally not too much help."

"This guy, what did he look like?"

"Human. Kommune-blond hair, down to here. Bit taller than yourself." The shopkeeper's eyes widened. "Oh... oh! But here he is, safe and sound. Thank goodness!"

"All a misunderstanding," Brynjar said smoothly in Bård's voice, adjusting his sunglasses. One hand subtly sought out the edge of a chocolate display, to prop himself up. "I'm very sorry if I gi-gave you a fright."

"Well, that’s a relief," Finn said. He picked out some crisps, some chocolate, and a bag of Bamse Mums.

"What happened to the man who... the other man?" the shopkeeper asked Brynjar.

"A cousin of mine," he reassured her. "He-- He _is_ somewhat socially awkward."

"You can say that again," she said, raising an eyebrow at him. "Might want to keep him out of the way of the dálki for a little while."

Finn paid, waving away her attempt to give him change, and waited outside for Brynjar. 

Thirty seconds later, Brynjar took up his walking stick, which he’d propped next to the gadfly, and his shoulders sagged with weariness. "You getted that?" he said. He was carrying a bag with elgpølse, cheese, and carrot sticks.

"Vegard's got him."

"Yeah." 

"Might as well take this, then, before someone else notices." Finn hefted the gadfly, and peered anxiously up at Brynjar. "You okay?"

"Soon. I are glad that Bård is a good Bård, because I couldst never manage it."

***

When Persille had gotten the message--even skribs were unreliable as hell here, but you could use them to morse--that her sisters were sending her an Ylvisåker, Vegard had taken out steaks to celebrate. They ate them with sautéed mushrooms, shallots, a vegetable medley, and garlic mashed potatoes. Bård had gathered from his earlier dinner that hulderfolk were not eaters of meat, but he had also gathered that Persille was no ordinary huldra. He saw one big difference, as they sat to eat: where her tail should have been, there was a stump.

As they all sat together at the kitchen table, around a centrepiece of complicated electronics and hastily scribbled notes, every so often she would sign at Vegard, and he would nod, or answer, or burst into laughter. Sometimes he translated. Sometimes he didn’t.

"So," Bård said finally, sketching geometric patterns into his mashed potatoes, "Persille, the hulderfolk in the mountains told me they had a sister here. They sounded a little in awe of you."

She looked at Vegard, and motioned a little with her head. Vegard, who was sitting closer, touched the stump of her tail briefly. "They don’t understand how she does what she does," he explained, "but it’s not easy for her to fit in, not before and certainly not now, and she’s stopped trying." Then he seemed to hear what he was saying, and looked stricken.

"How did you get involved in this?" Bård asked her.

She put down her fork and got up from the table abruptly. 

"Not a safe question?" Bård asked Vegard in a low voice. But before Vegard could answer, Persille was back, cradling something that looked, at first glance, like a chrome serpent with bulging blue eyes. Then she unwound it, so that the "eyes" were on either end, and buckled it to the stump of her tail. There was a skrib at the base, and another skrib built into the tip, and as the prosthesis touched her skin they both came to life. She sat back down, flashing him a smile. There was a whirring noise under the table, and Bård jumped as something tugged at his pant leg and then snaked up underneath to coil around his ankle.

She apologized for startling him, but it was a long story and this would make it easier to tell.

She was bright, bright enough that she’d been sent out of her own enclave, Lønstølhaugen Bygda, to go to school with the lios alfar. They’d made it sound like a great honour. It hadn’t been. It was the same knowledge, imparted by people who didn’t understand how she spoke, who punished her for hitting when she tried to speak to her fellow students, who sneered at her nakedness. One boy had been kind and curious for the first week or so. Then he grew distant, and that loss had cut her deeply. 

The girls had convinced her that people would be kinder, that her teachers would be more understanding, that her friend would return to her if she was more like them. Giggling, they brought her an old white dress, and handed her a cleaver. 

She had reeled into the street, after, and they had swarmed her. A man, a human with strong gentle hands and the light of kindness in his dark brown eyes, had chased them away and bandaged her up and bought her ice cream and taken her home to her people. For his trouble he had been blamed, and beaten, and sent fleeing.

For five years after, she languished among the hulderfolk. They were kind, but among them, she was damaged. There was pity in each switch of their tails, and she found herself left out of things. She read voraciously. She begged the elder sisters to get her a computer. They said no--they’d heard things about the internet, and she was especially vulnerable--but she knew an old nisse, and by splitting wood and hauling water for him, she was able to earn a few hours here and there on _his_ computer. It was the first time in three years that she had felt whole and equal, and the first time ever that she hadn’t felt alone. 

The summer that she turned fifteen, the old nisse died. She left a note, took a bag of bread and cheese from her enclave’s stores, and walked to the svartalfar city of Spåtindby. She had gone to the technical school, and signed that she would like to apply, that she would work her way through. Dubious, no doubt bewildered at being addressed by a dirty naked child, they had given her a test. Some sections she aced; other subjects she had never heard of. She looked up at the director's face, and knew that she was going to be rejected. Again. But the director told her to wait, and given her a place to stay in the dorms. In three days, she was led to a room, and there sat the Queen of Air and Darkness.

The Queen had seen to a comprehensive education, and given her small challenging tasks, but hadn’t allowed her to do anything dangerous until just last year. She couldn't really talk about her other assignments, but she felt like she had done good. She and a troll had collaborated on the design of her tail. She took a name. She ate meat. She could wear clothes when it was necessary. She had what she needed. Last year, she had visited her home enclave. Shocked at the change in her, her sisters had urged her to take a good long look at what she'd become. She had, and realized that she had turned into the kind of person she had always wished she could be.

For this assignment, she had started on identification of the anchors for the anchor web, and when the second would-be spellbreaker had died, been transferred to observing the site in Røros. The queen then found two people, newly magicless. Both had extraordinary discipline, and training such that with a little gadgetry, they could release the spells. The idea was that without magic, they should be able to do it without much ill effect. Persille’s job was to learn what defenses were being maintained and how to circumvent them, and work with whichever operative reached her first. But the security web had caught one of them, she’d heard, caught him and let them kill him before he got to the first anchor. Weeks later she’d gotten a call earlier than she expected: the one surviving operative had run into trouble. He had made contact in Koppang. Even if they could replace the pad of spells he’d lost, the setters of the anchor web were onto him now, and his nerve and stamina were dwindling. He said he needed reinforcements. The queen was redirecting him to Røros now, and when they were done there, Persille was to help him complete the others.

She had found the operative on a bench in front of a leather goods store called Ferdaskrinet one chilly afternoon, drinking from a flask concealed in a paper bag. This had given her pause, until the scent of hot chocolate wafted up from the contents. She, in her layers of skirts and pinned-up hair and bohemian patchwork coat--filled with dozens of little pockets for charms and potions and weapons and a sewing kit and skribs and hand sanitizer and books and her phone--had sat down next to him, pulled out a sketchbook, and started to sketch, not him, but the sigil she’d been told to show him. Then he turned to face her. He was older, and he looked exhausted, and the beard, artificially greyed with ash and coconut oil, did not suit him at all, but the last time she’d seen him they had both been bleeding and terrified. And here he was, nearly a decade later. Her eyes had filled with tears, and so had his in sympathy, although he didn’t understand why she was crying, and he was too covered in layers of clothes for her to tell him properly. 

She took care of him the way that he’d taken care of her all those years ago, and if he was bewildered and apprehensive at first, well, she had been too. She took him by the hand and marched him back to her flat, and helped him take off his outerwear. She added sausage pieces to the veggie Grandiosa she’d planned for dinner. He got visibly nervous when she started to unbutton her blouse, and when she saw his distress, she thought to pull her sketchbook out of the patchwork coat and write, "ØYER." His eyes had gotten very large, and he had begged her to leave her top on long enough for him to give her a hug. They had eaten their pizza with her tail twined around his ankle, just as it was now twined around Bård’s, and then she had given him ice cream, and he’d cried.

She had helped him take out the last eight anchors, driving him from town to town on her little Yamaha WR250R. The security web had never picked them up; it relied on the spoken word, and even it couldn’t penetrate the curtain of noise generated by a DNA-locked skrib. The night before the last anchor, at Eina, they had used their skribs to talk to the queen. Upon comparing notes with her, all three had been in agreement: a power sink was the best available explanation, and based on the placement of the anchors and the location of the energy disturbances, that power sink was most likely located in Jotunheimen. That was the last time they’d been in contact with Mab.

Fortunately, a fully charged anchor wasn’t the sort of thing you could just swap out at a moment’s notice, but it was only a matter of time before new ones were made and placed. The anchor web’s centre had to be deactivated, and the contents of the power sink released, as soon as possible. It was a suicide mission for anyone but Vegard. The trouble was, there was too much ambient magic. From what they’d picked up around town, containment of the power sink had been inadequate for some time now, and releasing the anchor points had only made it worse. It shorted out preloaded glyphs, and any other kind of magical storage. Vegard would have to cast the spell directly. 

"By tapping into _my_ magic," Bård realized. 

"It’s the only way," Vegard said, looking relieved to be part of the conversation again. "You don’t even have to be there. Let me use your magic, and then slam the doors, and we should all be safe."

"Okay," Bård said. "I’ve been keeping it up. You’d be surprised how well I’ve been keeping it up. And are there things for Finn and Brynjar to do?"

Persille nodded emphatically. The power sink was housed in a facility in nearby Fleskedalen. Alpha been lax about guarding the anchors, trusting to the camouflage of the holy places and the extreme danger they posed to protect them, but they were not lax about this; there was a magical barrier over the valley, and Kilpi patrolled, massacring anyone who got too close. It was going to be a chore to get into the facility and all the way to the power sink unscathed, and the more bodies she had to work with, the better.

"Then we have to find them, and talk to them," Bård said. He and Vegard did the dishes while Persille searched online for places where the cousins might be staying. She had to keep to the very vaguest of inquiries, though, because there was some indication that searches were monitored.

After the washing up was done, it was nearly one in the morning, but Bård reasoned that the news that he was alive and had found Vegard would be welcome at any time. They walked out together to the nearest public telephone, wearing Finland hoods. The temperature had plunged, and their breath steamed. 

Clutching the printout in one gloved hand, while Vegard fed kroner into the coin slot, Bård cleared his throat a couple of times, and hummed, and tried to channel the sound through the proper part of his vocal cords. "How's this?" He watched Vegard's face. "This? Pardon... Pardon..." Vegard gave him a thumbs up. "Okay." He dialled the first number. "Hi and pardon for the botheration. My name is Brynjar Kvam. Someone have taked my wallet, and I has losted my key, on which was the number of my room. I wondering, couldst thou connect me with my roommate?"

The first two times, they didn't know what he was talking about. The third time, the desk clerk murmured something sympathetic, and then said she would connect them. 

A few seconds of silence later, Finn said, in a very small voice, "Brynjar? If you're out there... who's in _here_?"

"It’s okay," Bård said, going weak with relief. "It’s me. I found my brother."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Instrumental Core's "Hope" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkEL1lu1FmQ


	32. Getting There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan / Ardriel takes care of business / Hammertime / Blending in with humans #8: keeping a pleasant tone during phone conversations / A conference in blackthorn / Det kan du vel: manne motstandere dine og sette en brukket nese / Changing faces / Ned and Drel / Airplane for Vegard

"Oh, thank gods!" Finn cried. He glanced over at Brynjar, who had opened the blue eye. “It’s them,” he whispered. “They’re safe.” Brynjar grinned, and blew a kiss, and rolled over. “You are safe, aren’t you?"

"Yeah. I can't say where we are--"

"Obviously," Finn said. Something else occurred to him. “And no more names.”

"--but I think we should meet up first thing tomorrow and talk about what to do."

"Okay. How 'bout in the lobby at ten? I'd say earlier, but B--my brother’s been poorly. He needs to sleep."

"Yeah, that's fine,” Bård said. “So do we.” His voice grew faint as he said, “You know where they are?” There was an answering murmur, and then Bård's voice came back full strength. “Yeah, he knows where your place is. Ten, the lobby, tomorrow morning."

"Tomorrow," Finn agreed. "I'm so glad. So glad. I'm looking forward to it."

"Me too. 'Night."

***

01:00 found Ardriel still in his office, with his head buried in his hands. It was all in ruins. Reports were still coming in from all over the country, but so far not one of the anchors was still intact. None of them, even when the saboteurs had supposedly been caught or chased off. Which meant the readings they'd been getting were signs of the containment eroding. The first of the replacements would come online around this time tomorrow, and they would place it immediately and shoot anyone who came near. But these things took a month to make, and even if they could handle being sitting ducks for the next twenty-four hours, even if the system as big has this had gotten could run off only a handful of anchors for a month, the _fines_ they were looking at...

They'd been complacent. They should have put more people on it. They should have put guards on the very moment they knew terrorists were targeting the anchors, and circulated a decent cover story. They should have caught that fellow in Florø, and made an example of him.

He wondered what it was that people hated so much, that thirty-two of them were willing to give up their lives. Were they friends of criminals? Family members? He supposed he would never understand; they had subscribed to an ideology of death, and would do whatever they were brainwashed to do.

He should have listened to Juniel. Against all reason, Bård Ylvisåker was involved. Checkpoint teams Seven and Thirteen had found him... and lost him again. It was all coming apart.

Ardriel squared his shoulders, and raised his head. The other side had been relying on stealth and deception. That wasn't going to work anymore. He had a private army. Well, so had _they _, and thirty-two people with nothing to lose, determined to die for the cause, could do a lot of damage, but they were all dead. They’d played their hand. Now it was time to play his.__

__First, since Ringebu was out, he used the landline to call Tálbeita at home. Then, using his melty voice, he called up a few area businesses, and was pleasantly surprised to find that two men fitting the Ylvisåkers’ descriptions had paid cash for a room in a guesthouse. It was a small matter to summon up their room’s phone records, and learn that Kvam had called them from a pay phone. Then he made a few more calls. Giving the problem adequate resources had been the right solution. Not that he was going to say that to Juniel, but he knew now. He could fix this._ _

____

***

Everyone spelled the locks on their doors. No one ever thought of windows. Thus it was that in the wee hours of the morning, Sikariel Eremiel broke into the second floor of a house in Ekeberg. The instructions had been very clear: in such a way that the authorities would take it for a random act of senseless violence, but the message would be unmistakable to its intended recipient, make stirring up trouble the worst decision of Finn Weber's life.

The bedroom would be... that way. He moved stealthily in the darkness, feeling for furniture.

The blow was a shock, and it took him a full second to realize that he hadn't just run into a chair. The lights were on by the time he registered the pain, and the fact that his kneecap was almost certainly in several pieces. 

A stunning redheaded lios alfr in black satin pyjamas had rolled to her feet, and now she brandished her silver hammer, grinning fiercely. "You want another?" she said, as if she were offering him pastries. "I've got another. I've got lots, and I've been saving them for someone _just like you_."

Sikariel tried to flip the table at her, but she caught it, and shoved it forward, and caught him mid-thigh with it. It sent a fresh wave of pain through his kneecap, and knocked him off balance, so that he fell in a heap on the floor. She was on him in a flash, pinning him. He knew moves to get out of this, but she apparently knew them too, because she blocked each one. 

From the bedroom, a shaky voice called, "Jess?"

Sikariel was in a lot of pain and lot of trouble, but he still felt a flicker of satisfaction at knowing that his companion had made it through the bedroom window all right.

The one called Jess hit him with a binding spell so heavy that he couldn't lift his head, and ran. "Mel!"

"So much blood," Melantha moaned. 

"Oh, gods, Mel... that's a vein!"

"I know, I know. I'm not used to a little knife. And I can't call the dálki and hold him down and keep pressure on it at the same time. Stop struggling, you fool! Or do you want to bleed out all over my bed?" A snarl crept into her voice. "It would serve you right if I let you."

"Well," said Jessalyn, "at least we know the boys are doing something right." She padded back into the kitchen, and when she was done making the call to the dálki, she duct-taped Sikariel's wrists and ankles together, just to be safe. "Tell your boss he made me do something I really didn’t want to do."

"Really?" Sikariel said, panting with the pain. "I was under the impression that you enjoyed that quite a bit."

Jessalyn rolled her eyes. "No, don’t get me wrong, it was nice to shatter your kneecap. Thank you for that. But your buddy made _laundry_."

***

Brynjar awoke struggling to breathe. A hand was heavy on the back of his head, pressing his face into the pillow. Close to his ear, a voice said, "You’re not going to cause trouble. Is that understood?"

Breathing slowly and deeply, Brynjar was able to get a lungful of air through the fabric of the pillow. He struggled harder, and then let his struggles weaken, and fell still. 

The hand cautiously lifted from the back of his head. Brynjar turned his head and gasped in air, but did not otherwise move. He stayed limp as they affixed zip ties around his ankles, and around his wrists behind his back. Dungeoner spells settled onto the plastic, making them resistant to unlocking spells. 

The grey eye, its vision still mercifully contracted, had not seen them approach, but now that he knew what he was looking at, a closed eyelid was no barrier. They seemed to be waiting for something, so he had leisure to observe them. The two women were cousins from a town in the north. They had been bullied for their troll ancestry. The man was from Nykvåg and accustomed to being the smartest man in any room, and he couldn’t understand how men like Ardriel Morael came to be in power. The trio didn’t know if they had changelings or humans, but they weren’t in the business of caring. 

Finn was awake too, groggy, wrists and legs zip-tied together, a bruise blossoming on his cheek. 

Minutes later, the phone rang. That would be Bård and Vegard and their plus one. They hadn’t mentioned her, but he could see her dimly if he looked in the right place. 

The man held a gun under Finn’s chin with one hand, and reached for the receiver with the other. "You’re going to tell them to come up," he said. "Sound natural."

Finn gave the man with the gun an ingratiating smile. As the receiver was put in place, his voice was impressively steady, his tone warm and friendly. "Hi! Hey, yeah, we’re running a little late. Uh, so why don’t you just save yourselves? Yeah. And maybe we’ll see you later." He’d sounded so casual that it took his assailant a moment to register the words and break his nose.

***

Bård’s eyes grew very large, his face very white, as he listened on the payphone in the lobby. Then he slammed the receiver down, grabbed Vegard’s and Persille’s arms, and started walking, tugging them along.

"Sir?" the desk clerk said. "Is everything all right?"

Bård ignored her, and pulled his companions into a run. He flung open the door and they poured into the cold. "Out of here," he said.

A running figure came at them from the side. Vegard and Persille ran; Bård wasted precious moments making sure it wasn’t one of the changelings before taking off. A hand closed on his upper arm. 

Metal snaked out, lashing the wrist of the man who grabbed him, leaving a long wide gash. The man held on, but the wound weakened his grip enough that Bård managed to wrench away.

Now the metal lashed at Bård, and he lunged away. It only tapped him, and gave him a mind-map that Persille entreated him to share with Vegard. 

They crossed the road, and ran down an alley. Shouts followed them. They ran for two blocks through narrow alleys and lanes, once up a flight of wooden stairs and around the edge of what must be a terraced garden in the summer months. Bård realized that he couldn’t hear the pursuers anymore. They dodged around a corner, and into a dense blackthorn hedge. 

Crouched there panting, with thorns sticking into his butt and thighs, Bård told them, "Finn told me we should save ourselves. And then there was a crunch and a scream, and the connection cut off."

Vegard let out a soft growl. "I don’t know what to do."

"What we came here to do," Bård said. "I know it’s not like before, when if they had the changelings they wouldn’t look for us, but Finn said he’d see us later." 

Persille lightly struck each of them in turn. She and Vegard had worked out a plan that didn’t use the changelings. They should execute it. Destroying the power sink would certainly create enough of a diversion to mount a daring rescue.

"Okay," Vegard said, "but we still have to get in there." To Bård he said, "We thought we could sneak into the complex in one of the vehicles, but they’ve taken to searching the vehicles as they go through. And there’s no approaching on the ground; they take out anything that gets even close."

Bård thought suddenly of the helicopter he’d disabled. It had to have come from somewhere. "When have you ever been satisified doing anything on the ground?"

***

The trio of intruders were joined at the room in the guesthouse by three more, empty-handed and ill-tempered, one of them bleeding. They drew on knitting glyphs and tied strips of a pillowcase around the man’s injury. Then the women seized Finn and Brynjar in a firefighter’s carry, took them down the back stairs to the first floor, and threw them into the back of a cube van parked at the back.

Through all this, Finn was cooperative, but let out the occasional moan of pain. Brynjar stayed limp, keeping his eyes closed, watching only the pinpoint of world he saw through the closed grey eye.

Two men climbed into the back with them. The van started up, and started to move.

He didn’t trust his broadcasting abilities here, but at the tick of a signal light, Brynjar pretended to stir to wakefulness. He took that corner like a recently awakened man who had tried to sit up at precisely the wrong time. The guards put out their hands to keep him from crashing into their knees, and when their skin touched his, he put rootlets into them and drained them unconscious. 

"Brynjar?" Finn said, his voice very small in the darkness.

"Hold, hold." Brynjar conjured a witchlight. It took some doing to bend his weak leg enough to manoeuvre both feet through the circle of his bound hands, but eventually his hands were in front of him. He tried to break the ties the way he’d seen on the internet, by bringing his elbows back in one swift motion, applying force from an angle the ties weren’t engineered to withstand, but by this time his arms were trembling with exhaustion, and he just didn’t have the strength. In the end, he melted through both sets of ties somewhere at their midpoints. The one on his wrists gave him a second degree burn, but he pulled in a little power to heal the worst of it.

He knelt by Finn, then, and propped him up in a sitting position against the wall of the truck. "This are going to hurt abominabibly," he cautioned. He thought a moment, and took a wallet from one of the unconscious men. "Bite on this. Eyes closed." Then he seized Finn’s nose, and set it. The wallet muffled the screech. Finn turned and spat it onto the gouged plywood floor of the truck. For a few seconds, he stayed turned to the side, chest heaving, blood dripping off the tip of his nose and soaking into the wood.

The moment Brynjar released the zip tie around Finn’s wrists--he was much more careful with the heat this time--Finn cupped shaking hands around his face, and started rocking back and forth. The front of the t-shirt he slept in was soaked and red. His eyes roved over to the wallet again. "I know what we can do," he whispered, still rocking, gaze flashing back to Brynjar through the cage of his fingers. "I know what we can do."

***

Officially, the closest airport was fifty kilometres away, in Haukåsen. But that was for humans. If Alpha was using helicopters to patrol the mountains and protect their top-secret operation, it seemed unlikely that they’d go so far afield, especially to an area without a significant elven population. There had to be something in Øvre Årdal, but the only set of buildings that would do was the aluminum smelting plant in the human quarter.

They didn’t dare go back to the safehouse, and slinking around in gardens wasn’t very good cover. Vegard--who had switched out his oversized layers of tweed and army surplus gear for lined jeans, snow pants, a sweater, and a parka--had one glamour left. When he used it, it became apparent _why_ this one hadn’t been used before. He rippled, and changed into a little girl with a frilly pink party dress and a red helium balloon.

Persille was wearing a voluminous skirt that allowed her prosthetic tail the full range of movement, leggings, a parka, and a scarf wrapped around her head, completely obscuring her features. She unwound the scarf a bit, becoming a pretty, flushed, and slightly windblown young woman in a skirt, and held Vegard’s hand. 

That left Bård. "I should be able to manage a glamour," he said. "I... I’ve been surprising myself lately."

Persille looked skeptical. Vegard said, heavily, "I was starting to, when... right before I... it was a thing I was reading up on. Practicing a little. It’s a different kind of magic from what we were doing. It’s not atoms; it’s photons."

Bård thought about it, and admitted, "I don’t even know where to start."

"This is how we’re going to take the last of the anchors down and release the power sink," Vegard said. "We might as well practice now. Okay?"

"Okay," Bård said, and bit back a yelp at the touch of Vegard’s mind. He felt his thoughts shuffled around, his magic guided in new ways that, he was relieved to note, he never would have thought of on his own. It _hurt_ : Vegard was gentle and careful and precise, but his pain was always there, and using Bård’s magic hurt him more. 

"Just a little tweak," Vegard assured him. "And I never thought I’d have to say this, least of all to my little brother, but my eyes are up _here_." It took Bård a ridiculously long time to work out where he meant.

Bård checked himself out in the front window of a house. His hair was dark, his nose was a little different, and Vegard had given him a mustache and a thick black unibrow that would have appalled Fred Hamelten. "If I’m supposed to be your father," he said, "people are going to think it’s weird if I talk your balloon." 

"Okay, but just so you know," Vegard said. He took both of their hands. Bård marvelled at the magic that must have gone into making Vegard's glance over at each of them translate to the young little face looking up at them.

"If you swing," Bård said, "We are both going to beat you severely about the string."

***

The road, commissioned by Alpha and built by prisoners’ labour, was a notch carved out of the mountainside, sometimes running parallel to Utladalsvegen, along the river Utla. Huge signs were posted at the mouth of the road.

KEEP OUT  
PRIVATE PROPERTY OF KILPI SECURITY AND PARENT COMPANIES  
ACTING WITH LICENSE OF THE PEACE DIVISION  
MATTERS OF NATIONAL SECURITY  
TRESPASS IS **TREASON**

For humans, the sign said:

KEEP OUT  
EXTREMELY SENSITIVE WILDERNESS AREA  
NOT PATROLLED  
DANGER OF AVALANCHE

The road was glamoured to look like a sheer drop, and then seasoned with a little repulsion to put off the people who saw a sheer drop as an appealing challenge. So far, all of the humans they’d had to deal with had approached from the other direction, so at least something was going right.

Just past Vettisfossen, the cube van passed through the first layer of filtering spells, which merely alerted a technician that someone was approaching and tripped a scrying spell. The tech saw the license plates and shut off the second layer of spells, which would have killed the engine. The third layer of spells required a code, which the driver inputted with a series of castings. Then there was a gate with a guard, who knew the driver and waved him in, and a second gate with a second guard, who checked the IDs of everyone in the cab. "What’ve you got in the back?" she asked.

"Two of our boys and a couple of troublemakers," the driver said. "Those two the alert went out about.”

“The Ylvisåkers? You sure it’s them and not their changelings?”

“Ylvisåkers. They fielded a call from Kvam last night, and they had the gadfly that the younger one took over the mountains. We tried to get the changelings too, they were on their way up, but the dark one tipped them off.”

"Gotta open it up," the guard cautioned, drawing her crossbow.

The driver thumped the door. "We’re coming in!" Then she took out the pins and let the door swing wide.

"Watch yourselves," said one of them sourly, hauling himself to his feet. He was Drel, a lios alfr with a scar across his face and the tip of one ear missing. He prodded the limp body of the dark-haired one with his toe, and showed off a rip in his jacket. "These two are more trouble than you’d believe."

"Not both," said the other, Ned, whose lumpy face and flat tufted ears pointed to multiple origins. "The blond one opened his eyes once." He started to laugh. "Rolled, hitted his head on the bench, and then right back out."

"Did you just say ‘hitted’?" the guard said dubiously. This was the most she’d ever heard Ned speak. And that was _probably_ why.

Ned winced, and fell silent. Drel glared at the guard. Nice that they had bonded, anyway.

"All right, take ‘em downstairs. And then--"

"Then I’m on break," Drel said shortly. "Gory McBloodyface here kicked everything he could reach. I’m going to the infirmary, and then I’m going to sit down somewhere soft."

***

The little pseudofamily walked up and down between the buildings of Hydro Aluminum for the better part of an hour. There were roughly two dozen of the bloody things, although only a handful of them were of a size to be hangars. The few that were open were filled with humans doing industrial things.

They were standing between two of the longest buildings and sharing a long, hopeless look when a white man in a bright yellow hardhat and high visibility vest came striding towards them. "Hi," he said, waving. "Listen, can we help you with anything?"

The brothers exchanged a look. And Bård said, "Thank you, but probably not. My daughter is convinced these are hangars, and she wants to see an airplane, or a helicopter, or something. I’ve been trying to show her inside the buildings, to show her it’s just people doing their job, but..."

Vegard stamped his foot prettily. "I saw helicopters, I _saw_ them."

"Yes, but honey, the nice man is saying we can’t be here anymore. People are trying to do work and it’s a little bit dangerous."

But the foreman looked thoughtful. "You’re the third group of people this month to mention flying machines. We do have a building that’s being rented out right now, to tell you the truth I forget it’s there most of the time, and I suppose it’s _possible_... Although you’d think we’d notice air traffic!"

"Nobody notices anything," Vegard complained.

"I’ll have a look," the foreman promised, and motioned for them to follow him. 

"We really appreciate this," Bård said.

"It’s not just for you," the foreman said, shaking his head a little. "If they’re keeping aircraft in here, there are rules about fuel storage, zoning... I keep meaning to check up on them, it’s on the agenda at every meeting, and as I said, it keeps slipping my mind." 

The building was on the edge of the compound. The foreman knocked on an office door, and when there was no answer, pulled out a key and let them in. 

"Oooooh," Vegard said. The building was dark, the only light filtering in from high windows up top. In the dimness it was possible to make out two helicopters, one of them a little banged up, but his eyes were fixed on the Cessna Skyhawk 172S. 

The foreman grinned. "Be careful, honey. You want me to hold your balloon while you explore?"

"I think that would be very awkward for both of us," Vegard said solemnly, before turning and running. 

The foreman chuckled. "I bet she keeps you busy."

"You don’t know the half of it," Bård said.

Vegard was walking around in what Bård recognized as a pre-flight check: propeller, door, nose gear, ailerons, fuselage, landing gear, rudder, elevator... It looked a bit weird, to see the cap of the oil tank unscrewing itself, or the fuel tanks draining themselves to check for water, as a balloon bobbed next to them. But the foreman seemed oblivious. "What a little cutie. She’s really into that plane!"

Bård stole a look at Persille, who stood at his elbow. Vegard was clearly planning to fly the thing. "How much to take it out for an afternoon?" Bård asked, feeling ridiculous.

The foreman brayed with laughter. "Well now, even if I had the authority to do that, you don’t just take an airplane out for a spin!"

Persille hiked her skirt. Her tail snaked out and struck the foreman’s wrist. He staggered backwards, gaping at her, at Bård, at Vegard. Persille made a shooing motion, and the foreman tripped over his feet, backpedalling.

"What did you say to him?" Bård said wonderingly, holding out a hand for her answer.

She had told him the truth. He hadn’t been able to see her, so she made him able to see, and told him the whole truth. 

"Somebody open the doors," Vegard called from the cockpit. "Then come on up!"

Bård and Persille each took a door, drawing up the bolts from their barrels in the ground, and swung them wide. Bård ran for the cockpit. He held the passenger door open for Persille, only to discover she was hanging back.

"Come on, Persille," Vegard said. He had flipped the engine switch on, and his thumb hovered over the fuel switch. "It’s just a short flight. We need you, and I don’t know another way in."

"He’s a good pilot," Bård promised.

"I’m proficient, competent, and current," Vegard agreed.

Persille glowered, but she crawled into the back seat and made herself as small as possible. She made it clear to them that she had never done this before, but she had heard a lot, a _lot_ of stories of Underjordiske who had broken the prohibition against flight and come to bad ends. She was going to do this because she believed in what they were doing, and she trusted Vegard.

Vegard reached back and patted her arm. "Seatbelts," he told them, and powered up.

The plane trundled out of the building, and Vegard turned it onto the broad paved alley that ran between buildings. 

This, of course, did not go unnoticed, and people in safety equipment emerged from the buildings, some shouting questions or orders, most just gawking. Vegard ignored everyone, and used the alley as his runway, trusting them to get out of the way. They did, and he accelerated to takeoff speed. When he pulled back on the stick, the wheels left the ground, and Persille let out a whimper.

Vegard chuckled gently. "We’re fine, we’re fine."

They levelled off at a thousand feet, keeping the river Utla below them. Bård watched his brother, aware, suddenly, that Vegard’s pain was gone for the moment. They’d taken nearly everything from him, but they couldn’t take flight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: the first half of Nero's "Symphony 2808," to 7:00 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPWpJ69mfYc


	33. A Controlled Dive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proficient, Competent, and Current / Abandon rescue / Persille’s discovery

Vegard soared. For the first time in months, he felt light and happy and free. He could feel the wind push at the small plane, and know just how to compensate. Some of the computerized readings were wonky, but he could fly on what he saw from the other dials and indicators and readout, he could trust them to tell him the truth, and then he could _do_ something about it. The machinery would obey him. The laws of physics would keep the plane aloft, and if something went horribly wrong, well, that was according to physics too, but right now everything was behaving the way it was supposed to. Everything wasn’t set right yet, but after a week of idleness and frustration they were working on it, his brother by his side where he should be, their link was back, and as long as he didn’t allow his heart to swell to the point where he was tempted to burst into song, this was just fine. 

The Utla snaked below them, water black against the snow, growing narrower and narrower as it wound through the mountains. Vegard thought he saw, on the other side of mountains to the northeast, a domed cylindrical building, set into the mountainside.

"There we go," he said triumphantly. "Kilpi headquarters, dead ahead."

Persille made a small noise.

"Oh now, see, everything’s fine," Vegard said. "Not even a little dragon. We’ve just about made--"

The plane suddenly went very quiet.

"Oh no no no no no no no," Vegard said. Wind from the north, speed two hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. He pressed the fuel shutoff valve, turned on the auxiliary fuel pump, checked the magnetos, and thumbed the ignition switch a couple of times, to no effect. He’d lost power, not just to the engine, but to everything. The instruments were dark. They were gliding.

Bård whistled a bit of "I Can See Clearly Now." Vegard didn’t want to take his eyes off the windshield, but Bård, looking back, said, "We tripped some kind of barrier spell."

"Okay okay okay," Vegard said. Physics. "We’re gonna be okay. You hear me, Persille? We’ve still got wings. I can get us down." He adjusted the rudder, angling them towards the building. Flaps should be up, and back in the days of Johnson bars he could have managed it on his own, but these were electric controls. He knew a no-flap landing was possible, although they were going to have to come in at a steep enough angle that he wasn’t keen on taking unnecessary chances. "Bård, when I give you the signal, can you magick our flaps up?"

"Twenty percent?"

"As far as they'll go."

Bård let out a breathless little laugh. "I’ll give it my best."

"Fuel selector, on; mixture, forward; carb heat, on..." Not that any of these controls were actually going to _do_ anything under the current conditions. This was going to be an interesting landing. Besides everything else, they probably wouldn’t have stealth on their side.

"Where were you going to land this thing, anyway?" Bård demanded.

"If they have this thing, they have to be able to land it somewhere." Vegard pointed at the parking lot. "Be a bit hard, but I’ve seen it done."

They were over the dome now. It was tinted, but it still burned with a fierce indigo light. As they passed over it, descending steadily, Bård squirmed and grimaced.

The parking lot was about four hundred feet wide, and right now very filled with cars, but there was a wide space down the centre for drivers.

"I need the flaps up," Vegard said. 

Bård’s face twisted, and he sang, " _Up go the flaps, down go the whee-eels; hope you’ve got your heat turned on, baby._ " Simultaneously, Vegard felt the hydraulics operate in the wings. Bård sank back, looking spent.

"Gonna be a hard landing," Vegard cautioned. "Belts tight, heads down, hands over the back of your neck, elbows tucked in." _And get ready to kiss your butt goodbye_ , he would have joked if it had been just Bård, but there was no need to antagonize Persille.

If the roof had been square instead of domed, they would have clipped it. Personnel in Kilpi uniforms streamed out of the door to the parking lot, carrying weapons and brandishing balefire. The ones in front had to duck as the plane came in over their heads. 

"Brace," Vegard said, and with a thud that rattled his teeth and drew squawks from his passengers, they slammed down on the tarmac, bounced once, and were coasting. With a small army of mercenaries running after them at top speed.

Bård took his hands off the back of his neck and raised his head. He looked back. "As soon as we slow down..." 

"We’re not going to," Vegard told him, keeping his voice soft and calm. He tapped the brake a little, enough to take the edge off their speed but not enough to let anyone catch up. "Crash positions. Know where your belt release is." As they ducked their heads again, he raised his voice. "When we stop you’ll get out, run, and take cover. Okay? Hitting the end in three... two... one..."

There was a mighty jolt as the landing gear ran up against the low cement pylons that marked the edge of the parking lot, caught on one of them, swung the plane around, and plunged them over. Sideways, the plane slid partway down the deep hill, throwing the people inside against their seatbelts. It listed a little to the side, but the wings kept it upright. It came to rest with a crunch. For a few seconds, the only sounds were panting, and the tick of cooling metal.

"On five," Vegard said. "One... two... three... nope." They were starting to slide again. They did a full one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn before settling, this time listing in the opposite direction. "One... two... three... four... Okay," he said, releasing his seatbelt, "go go go!"

The driver’s door was blocked by snow, but Bård had gotten the passenger door open, and he handed Persille out. They both looked shaken but fine. Vegard brought up the rear, careful to keep low behind the plane. According to the sun it was not quite two o’clock. The plane had fared quite well, considering, but one of the wing struts was snapped and he didn’t think it would be flying again anytime soon. 

Shouts were audible but no one had yet appeared. Persille glanced up, and motioned quickly: down, and to the side. There was a steeper drop there, but having signalled, she wound her scarf around her face again, put her arms up to protect her head, and simply rolled through the snow. The brothers shrugged at each other and followed suit. The drop was really only alarming for a few seconds, and then they were in deep snow in a little hollow. 

There was a great noise. Heat rushed over them, and they hugged the ground as hot metal flew over their heads. Persille’s tail--surprisingly warm--touched Vegard’s cheek and told him that she suspected Kilpi had used balefire to blow up the plane. They might think they’d gotten the inhabitants too, and the heat would have melted their tracks, but it would be best to move quickly and quietly to the entrance. Vegard shared this with Bård. Keeping low, Persille led them around the base of the hill. There was a service door at the floor of the valley.

For awhile, the crackle of the fire and the shouts of people still on the tarmac were all they heard. Then faintly at first, growing louder, a steady _whupwhupwhupwhupwhupwhup_ seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"Helicopter," Bård hissed. "Want me to take care of it?"

Persille shook her head, and tapped his cheek with her tail. Vegard eavesdropped: if it came to that, they might need him, but while there was a chance that their pursuers suspected they were dead, it was better not to enlighten them.

The noise grew louder. Vegard hurried them under a shelf of rock. Persille pushed him down until his face was almost in the snow, and covered his head with her skirt, and Vegard was about to squawk at her when he remembered that his head was still glamoured as a bright red balloon.

They waited as the helicopter made a thorough search of the valley, and then continued north. Vegard was cold, and his muscles burned from his awkward position, but he held it until they lost visual contact. Then they started moving again, as swiftly and quietly as cold cramped limbs could manage, to where the blueprints said the entrance would be.

They were nearly on top of it--literally--when they saw the guards. The slope they were on led to an even deeper hollow, but the bottom was curiously flat and circular, and under the snow there were outlines of a road. So they stayed above the hollow. Then Persille put her arms out, halting them both, and pointed. It was hard to see, white on white, but their trajectory ended in a very regular edge about the width of a door. And when they stopped, and watched, a black toque bobbed in and out of sight.

: _How many are there?_ : Vegard asked, silently.

: _I can’t see,_ : Bård replied.

: _No, I mean, with your magic._ : At Bård’s look of utter incredulousness, Vegard remembered. : _Sorry. I forget it’s chaos_.:

: _Like trying to hear a puppy bark at a rock concert,_ : Bård thought. : _You’re probably lucky right now. I can picture this driving you up the wall._ :

They crept closer to the edge as soundlessly as possible, careful not to send snow trickling over the edge. There were two. One of them talked, occasionally. The other made softer, noncommittal noises.

: _Need them taken out?_ : Bård asked.

Vegard thought of his stints as a border guard with the army. : _They’re just guys,_ : he said, signing to Persille at the same time. : _Please don’t hurt them._ : 

: _I wouldn’t. But they wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you,_ : Bård reminded him. 

: _Because they’re wrong about me. I want them to keep being wrong about me._ : 

In the end, he backtracked, and came up the road, screwing up his face in an expression of terror as he approached the guards. One put a hand on a hip holster. The other held his hands out. "What the hell...?" 

Vegard started crying in great hiccupping sobs, and pitched his voice high. "Please don’t shoot me. I don’t have any magic. I just want to go home to my family." 

The one with her hand on the weapon thumbed open a pouch on her belt, and took out a monocle. Before she could peer through it, though, Bård slipped down from the roof and pinned her arms behind her, and Persille did the same to the man. 

" _Niaiserie!_ " cried the man, but his tone was resigned. 

"Is that, like, one of those trigger words for the security web?" Vegard asked, approaching. He rummaged in the man’s pockets for zip ties, and found four. "It’s probably not going to work here. Too much interference." 

"I have a little girl about your age," the man babbled. "Her name is Andromeda. She’s the prettiest little thing..." 

"It’s a glamour, Kas," the woman said disgustedly. "Haven’t you figured it out?" 

"I have a little girl my age too," Vegard confessed, zip-tying the man’s wrists together, pulling gently to make sure sure that the bond was secure without being too tight. "She misses her papa." 

"Then why are you doing this?" the man demanded. "Why don’t you go home and enjoy her? And let us go home and enjoy our kids. Please." 

Vegard secured his ankles, and patted his arm. "You’ll get to go home, if I have anything to say about it. But they have something of mine in there. And I need it back." 

With the man tied up, Persille was free to help Bård, and it was a good thing, because the woman was kicking. She got a good one in at Vegard’s midsection. (He suspected that she’d been going for his chin.) It took all three of them to get her zip-tied. They sat the guards down at either side of the concrete stoop. They’d probably get back together and find a way to untie each other and raise the alarm, but not now, and not soon. 

"In or out?" Bård asked. "It is pretty cold out here, but..." : _...sounds like it could get pretty hot in there,_ : he finished. 

Vegard asked the guards, "Are you dressed warmly enough for us to leave you out here?" 

The man nodded miserably. The woman spat at him, and missed. 

Vegard took the man’s key card, and opened the lock. The door opened onto a plain concrete stairwell, with an elevator at the bottom. Wedging the door open with his heel, he said to Bård and Persille, "Keep them quiet for a minute for me?" As they covered the guards’ mouths, Vegard opened the box beside the door, picked up the telephone receiver inside, and said, changing his pitch and dialect to approximate the male guard’s voice, "This is--" He checked the key card. "--Qaspiel. We’ve been hearing noises. Everything okay in there?" 

"Yeah, they’re just searching the hillside to make sure no one got out of that plane. I don’t think it’s very bloody likely the way they crashed, but the brass says something big’s going down, so we’re just being careful. How about you guys? See anything special?" 

Vegard knew that the longer he stayed on the line with the guy, the more chance he stood of saying something that would give him away, but he’d done this kind of work before, he knew what kind of behaviour was expected, and saying too little would likely arouse suspicions too. The guards’ muffled shouts rose around him. "Like I said, noisy. Am I looking for something in particular?" 

"It wasn’t a big plane. I guess, anyone not in uniform. Particularly someone burned or injured... I’d put money on everyone being dead, though. Just... just keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary." 

"Will do," Vegard promised, and hung up. Then he dropped the key card in Qaspiel’s lap, pulled the door open again, and ushered Bård and Persille through, leaving the guards outside on the stoop.

***

They climbed two floors up. Their blueprints told them this was the level for all the security staff things: break room, infirmary, cafeteria, and locker rooms. With Persille training a weapon she’d taken off the woman, they quietly opened the stairwell door.

The corridor was stark unpainted cement, brightly lit with fluorescent lights. The door they’d come through was marked with an exit sign. Vegard had to get out of this glamour before someone saw him. It would be less conspicuous to just be himself here.

A great group of uniformed officers spilled into the hall, arguing loudly about sports. Persille sheathed her burner, and she and Bård held Vegard’s hand and smiled at people, and no one paid any mind, although Vegard had to shy away from someone who tried to ruffle a little girl’s hair and would have been very surprised to touch a grown man’s midsection. "We’ve been teaching her that no one gets to touch her without her permission," Bård explained.

"Good lesson," the woman said, nodding, before she moved on.

The three of them opened the door to the locker room. There were people inside, some watching videos on someone’s phone, some changing, one lios alfr man pinning his long braided hair into elaborate spiral patterns. Vegard couldn’t help glancing over, and the man smiled and said, "It’s the Feast of Tamfanae Sacrum. They can call me up for an emergency, but they better not try to stop me doing the adornments. What happened to you, honey? They call your folks in the middle of your birthday party?"

Vegard nodded. Bård and Persille were tugging at his hands, but he ignored them, and looked up at the man with wide scared eyes. People explained things to kids. "We couldn’t find anyone to watch her," Bård said apologetically.

The man stopped pinning up his hair and got down on one knee, so that he was eye-level with Vegard’s crotch, and looked up at his solar plexus. "The company has been having trouble with some of its spells, and earlier today they caught the Ylvisåker brothers in town, so the boss called everyone in to protect this place. And if you’re with us, honey, you’re protected too."

Vegard pressed close to Bård. "The Ylvisåker brothers?" 

"Iit’s okay, honey. They’re locked up very securely down below, and... we just took care of three others we think were probably their changelings. They can’t hurt anyone anymore."

"Thanks," Bård told the man. "We’ll find something for her to do and get suited up, and be right out." He and Persille shepherded Vegard into the unisex washroom.

They were alone in there, thank goodness. Vegard pulled out his power reservoir and opened it, and was alarmed to see the indicator on it change from green to yellow to orange as the contents dispersed into the ambient magic. He dipped his finger in and swirled it around before the indicator could turn red. Holding his mind in the way he remembered, he used the dregs to pull off his glamour.

Persille touched his wrist with her tail, and between her and Bård he felt waves of relief that he looked like himself again. Persille would go back out and get them uniforms; if anyone asked her questions, she would sign her answers, and in her experience this made most people very obliging.

After she had returned with three uniforms, they changed. Vegard and Bård hid their hair under caps. Persille cut a slit in the pants for her tail. Then she got out a sewing kit and they each grabbed a needle and hastily embroidered names on the blank patches on their uniform jackets, becoming Bjørn, Vidar, and Pernille. As they did this they held a small, silent conference, the brothers sitting crosslegged opposite each other, Vegard exposing an ankle to Persille’s tail. Security was much heavier than they’d expected, but they could work with this. It was one thing when the cousins could have been anywhere, but if Finn and Brynjar were on the floor below, it made sense to go and get them now. If they ran into problems, they would scatter, and meet back here.

Sewing done, the brothers put their jackets on. Persille hid her tail, first by tying her many-pocketed patchwork jacket around her waist, and then by tying on the coat from Kilpi over top of that. 

Now they walked down the corridor like they belonged there, nodding at all they met, and took the stairs back down one floor. Here was another corridor, that the blueprints said were for utility and storage. There were no windows on the rooms, but the one with the guard out front was almost certainly the one that held Finn and Brynjar.

"Aurora?" Vegard said, reading the name embroidered on her jacket. "Take your break. When you get back, bring someone else with you. There should be two guards on these clowns."

"They pulled Sam off," the young woman babbled. "Something about a plane coming in."

"Okay, well, that’s fine," Bård told her, "but they got the plane. No one made it out of there. We’ve got this, but when you get back, find someone to work with you, all right?"

"All right," she said gratefully.

When she was out of the hallway, Vegard tried the door. Locked. "Do you have a hairpin or something?" Bård asked Persille.

She smirked at him, and her tail emerged from behind her coats, and fixed onto the knob. There was a flare of magic, a high-pitched whine, and the sound of a latch working. She made them stand back from the door for a few seconds. Then she wrapped the sleeve of one of the coats around the knob, and turned.

Finn and Brynjar lay sprawled on a plain, stained concrete floor with a drain in the centre. The rest of the room was bare and empty.

Vegard saw Finn’s bloodsoaked shirt and his bowels turned to ice. He’d been supposed to protect Finn, and he’d failed miserably. He knelt, and felt for a pulse. Still good and strong. He put a hand on Finn’s shoulder. Something felt strange about it. "Mm?" Finn said. He opened his eyes. His voice sounded ragged but surprisingly clear, given what had been done to his nose. "They... they got us."

"No, no no. I know. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. You okay?"

"Just... just tired. I don’t know if I can..."

Bård was crouched next to Brynjar, with a hand on the man’s head. "Hey... hey."

Brynjar blinked hard, and tried to sit up, and failed. "I don’t understand," he murmured. "How did you get out? What happened to your _eye_?"

Bård jerked his hand back, scrambling to his feet. "Let’s go," he said.

Vegard patted the arm of the man in front of him, an arm that he now realized felt far too big to be Finn’s, the shirt stretched uncomfortably tight across the skin. "You rest," he said soothingly.

The man wearing Finn’s face gave him a grateful smile, and drifted off again as Vegard and Bård fled the room.

They closed the door behind him. "Seal it up again," Vegard begged Persille. "It’s not them."

Persille made a face. Before her tail hit the knob again, she used it to tell him that the best she was going to be able to do was fuse the mechanism. She could break locks and short out dungeoners with this thing, but it wasn’t so good at fixing them.

"Glamours," Bård explained. Persille tapped him. "I don’t _think_ they were bait," he said.

"No," Vegard agreed. "They seemed very confused. I think that means Finn and Brynjar are around somewhere."

"I don’t even know where to look," Bård lamented.

Persille tapped both of them. They weren’t going to look. They were in, they had a job to do, they already had a perfectly good plan, and the longer they waited, the greater the chance of their being discovered. She was going to take out the backup security grid, which should be on this level. Then she was going up to Level Twelve, the main security level. When she shut it all down, Kilpi would throw everything it had at protecting the power sink, so the brothers would have to be in place and ready to cast. She was going to do everything she could to survive, and she trusted that they would do everything _they_ could, too. Without waiting for their answers, she pulled them both into a quick hug, and walked away.

Vegard started walking in the opposite direction. "Uh, Vegard?" Bård said. "This way."

"What?"

"Elevator. I’m not walking up thirty-nine flights of stairs."

They caught up to Persille, who laughed and shook her head at them, and waved as they stood waiting for the elevator.

***

One of the things that had clinched their suspicions about the power sink was the shape of the facility they had obtained plans for: on three sides, a square divided into forty-two storeys. It was arranged around a vast undivided cylinder, the outer edge of which formed the fourth side. Below the bottom floor, the cylinder tapered into a shallow cone before continuing, much narrower, out of range of the blueprints. The bottom apparatus wasn’t labelled, but if Persille were going to build a massive power sink continuously fed by an anchor web and drawn on by emotion-bending sympathets and other secondary feeders, that cone would house at least a couple of Class Eighty hard-walled vortices, layered on top of each other and set to a secure downward spiral, with a small, permeable Class Ninety-six at the centre, trickling magic upward, and a geo-rooted stability spell. And the wall of the cylinder would be three inches of iron covered in quadruple-layered silver sheeting interspersed with spell-impregnated oak and ash. If _she_ were doing it.

At any rate, the layout meant that where the walls of the rest of the facility met the cylinder, there were two slices of narrow, tapering space, one on each side of every floor. The room Persille was looking for was in the westernmost slice. 

This door required a key card. Persille searched the Kilpi jacket, and didn’t find one. She hadn’t really expected to; you didn’t leave a key card in a uniform when you washed it. From one of the pockets of her patchwork jacket, she took another card. 

In the twilight days of the Iron Wars, reflective constitution had been the innovation that saved the elves from total destruction. The humans, believing they had annihilated the enemy, saw only what they expected to see: empty fields and forests, unpopulated mountains, silent glens bare of revellers. Reflective constitution was a part of the basic glamour that protected everyone. It was also used in more sophisticated glamours, in attraction charms, in the programming of changelings, and now in this little card, which was spelled to find out the numbers the card reader expected, and rearrange itself to provide them. The reader blinked green, and she was in.

She surveyed the array of monitors and the banks of switches and the diagram on the wall. The centre spell was a Class 102, which surprised her. It was being powered by mahtava coils. Only four of them. She wouldn’t have powered anything higher than a One Hundred on them, but then, when were they supposed to install a fifth? The Eighties--she’d been right about that, at least--were running off the sink itself. That struck her as a very badly designed setup. 

She could imagine how it had happened, could imagine them putting this together in an approximation of good faith, and not anticipating how big it would get, how much capacity they would need. They should get down on their knees and thank Mab--and Vegard--because if they kept running this thing like this sooner or later it was going to blow, and if it had blown with everything tightly secured behind the anchor web, it would have taken out everything from Kristiansund to Fredrikstad. As it was now, it was leaking so badly that it would just enchant most of Jotunheimen, although if the explosion was routed through the sympathets, it was going to manifest everyone’s worst fears, and she was _not_ cleaning that up. For that matter, they were going to have to be very careful when they undid the spells. This was way too much magic to simply release into the atmosphere. 

Not for the first time today, or even this week, Persille found herself wishing she could contact the queen. Update her. Let her know how wrong things were. But what was Mab going to tell her? Call it off? Not bloody likely. They were here, they were in, and with Kilpi on high alert now they weren’t going to get another chance. They were going to have to solve this stuff themselves. She was going to have to get a message to the brothers.

For now, though, she had to get them in. She would take no chances. First she cut magic feeds to each of the backups individually. Then she turned off the master switch. She cut the auxiliary electrical power to the other security backups: locks, alarms, floodlights, intercom. Finally, she pulled out the most expensive tool in her patchwork jacket, an override inscriber. Seven thousand kroner, purchased with the pay from her first job for the queen. If she made subtle changes to the back-end glyphs, even a few of them, on the off chance that someone powered them up again...

A hand fell on her shoulder. 

She spun, and felt a dizzying sense of dislocation as she looked up at the lumpy-faced creature who loomed over her. He took the inscriber from her. Before she could put her finger on what was so wrong, he was steering her out of the room, where she was greeted by a group of guards. 

"Clearance?" one of them said stonily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: the second half of Nero's "Symphony 2808," starting at 7:00 - https://youtu.be/cPWpJ69mfYc?t=7m


	34. Maelstrom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is under control / Level 42 / A coffee run / The pivot / A mighty wind / Y/N

Persille made as if to reach into her pocket, but instead tried to twist away from the giant who held her. He was weaker than he looked, and she nearly broke free, but then the one who had spoken pulled on a grey glove, and made a flinging motion. 

Magic suddenly dragged at her. She recognized a dálki-issue binding spell. Co-operate and she would be fine; resist, and she would be overcome by weakness.

The gloved officer made a motion for the uniform jacket around her waist. There was nothing in that, but she dreaded them finding the patchwork jacket. Her captor kept a firm hand on her shoulder, and searched the pockets of the uniform jacket. "Nothing," he reported. "Lock her up?"

"Yeah. What’d she get to?"

She hadn’t had a chance to use the inscriber. They could just turn it all back on. She’d blown it. She’d blown everything. 

The giant glanced behind him, scanning the darkened room. "Nothing yet. All safe, sir." He pulled the door shut behind him, and the lock re-engaged. 

The gloved officer said, "Can you handle this little lady yourself?"

The giant nodded, and got a gentle but very firm grip on her upper arm. Limping, he walked her away from the control room. Instead of taking her to the bare room where the two men who were not the Ylvisåkers lay, he took her to the elevator. 

The more she watched him move, the surer she was: his lame side was also his blind side. And she’d just seen, he wasn’t that bright. They got into the elevator. He reached forward and pressed a button--she wasn’t really paying attention to which one--and then stood back with her. 

She quietly, ever so slowly coaxed her tail out, ready to deliver a stunning pulse, and made it snake around to the side he couldn’t see.

He reached down and gently pushed it away from him, with a very sweet smile. In her experience, men who smiled like that were about to try to hurt her. And there was nothing she could do. 

But the elevator had arrived now, and he marched her off... onto the seventeenth floor.

This was Research and Development. The light was harsh and white. Why was he taking her here? Did they want guinea pigs?

He closed a gentle hand on her tail before she could lash out at him again. "No," he said, and there was good humour in his voice. He walked her around the curve of the wall, to a door. It took all of her will not to start struggling. If the binding spell weakened her, she wasn’t going to have a chance against him.

The door had a code lock. He hesitated before it, and then drew a ridiculously complicated glyph on the pad. The glyph turned white, and the door opened on a room lit only by electronics that she recognized immediately.

A second backup security system!

Not through the official dismantling method, but by simply gathering up the threads of magic and snapping them, the officer everyone called Ned broke the binding spell. With that sweet smile of his, he gave Persille back her inscriber.

***

There was magic in the air, and that wasn’t nearly as nice as it sounded. Bård could feel it humming in the back of his teeth and itching in his brain. He’d stripped off his glamour in the elevator. It had helped for about fifteen seconds.

When the elevator doors opened into a vast dark blue open space, a fresh wave of it washed over him. He turned and started to ask Vegard if he really couldn’t feel _any_ of that, but Vegard just swallowed hard, and motioned with his chin dead ahead: someone with little nubs of horns and extra bits on her uniform was striding purposefully towards him, flanked by four other armed guards.

Her nametag said her name was Namanari Hannya Aiko. She reached into a pocket, and pulled out a monocle, through which she eyed them both. She nodded. "Good," she said. "Sorry, gentlemen; we just caught an infiltrator on the third floor, in one of our uniforms. Had to make sure you’re you."

"We’re definitely us," Vegard said brightly.

"Leipzig, Sindriel, you’re out," she said, and the air seemed to go out of the two men on her immediate right and left. They handed Vegard and Bård their burners, and shuffled into the elevator.

Namanari Hannya marched them across a tiled floor smooth like black glass. Around them, people in lab coats moved between stations lit more brightly than the rest of the floor, reading aloud from tablets, conveying instruments from place to place, consulting over computers, and purposefully spinning great balls of magic. Guards were stationed at regular intervals around the room, and every so often they would pull out a monocle and eye the people in labcoats. 

Beyond all this activity was the sink itself. The shaft ended at the floor, and railings were the only physical barrier between them and a soup of eddying blue light, churning lazily just below floor level. Skeins of it twisted up, feeding ceiling fixtures set with glowing blue roundels. They reminded Bård a little of a lotus pod, but when he touched Vegard’s mind, Vegard was thinking of the compound eye of an insect. 

"Have you been up here before, gentlemen?" Namanari Hannya asked. 

"No," Vegard said.

"Your buddy’s feeling it already," she observed, clapping Bård on the shoulder. "That’s why everyone got called in today. We need people up here, given the situation, but we can only keep you on for two hours."

"How can the lab people stand to work in this?" Bård demanded raggedly. 

"It’s not always this bad," Namanari Hannya said with a shrug. "The attacks on the anchor points have made it really unstable right now, right at a time when we’ve got a lot of inflow, so the past couple of weeks have been rough. But they’ve been getting used to it over the course of years, too."

"Does being unstable make it dangerous?" Vegard asked.

"Not as dangerous as the alternative--having a bunch of dangerous criminals walking around at full power," she retorted. She stationed them in front of a great double-layered glass wall near the sink shaft. "The scientists should be wearing their ID tags. If you see anyone without one, bind them. Hard. Don’t worry about offending anyone; they know the rules, and if anyone snuck in here it could be disastrous. If anyone approaches you, wanting to get in, even if they have a tag, check them out in the monocle, and ask them questions. Why, how, who authorized them."

"How are we going to know if they’re wrong?" Vegard asked. " _I_ don’t know why this thing exists."

"It’s platform access. Don’t worry about it too much. Just make sure they have answers." She patted them both on the shoulder, spun on her heel, and left.

Bård took in the setup. They were guarding what looked like an elevator shaft at a mall. Lotusy insecty things up above. Sink below. From this angle, he could see something projecting into it, a walkway ending in a circular platform with a display monitor and some sort of instrument panel on it. 

: _This is terrible design,_ : Vegard thought at him.

: _Why?_ :

Vegard grabbed Bård’s attention and directed it at the platform. : _That’s got to be the pivot. The central anchor point. That’s where I have to be to do the magic._ :

: _So we lucked out, getting put here. Nice._ : Bård felt a flicker of trepidation. : _Doesn’t look very safe._ :

: _Basically, it’s a nastier version of the rest--designed to fry anyone who tries to undo it. I’ll be okay because I have no magic, but there’s not another way to shut it down, even temporarily. I don’t know how they did any maintenance or anything._ :

: _They probably didn’t._ : Bård scanned the area in front of him, every so often sneaking a glance back at the shaft. When Vegard was on the platform, he’d probably be safe unless someone was looking right at him, but they had to get him in there. : _What she said about catching an infiltrator..._ :

: _Persille can take care of herself. If we get to the end of our two hours without word, we’ll go looking for her, but they’re going to notice if we try to leave early. Did she tell us how we’d know when to move?_ : 

: _She said we’d know._ :

***

"Praise to Tamfana and to Berchte and to Baduhenna..."

Finn slouched blearily against the doorframe. Gods knew Brynjar had done wonders for it, and the couple of Paracets he’d had in the infirmary were helping a little, but his face still felt like a planet made of ache, and his nose was its molten core. And while in theory he supported the right of anyone to worship whatever they wanted, and it _was_ the Tamfanae Sacrum, he really wanted to dropkick his praying companion down the elevator shaft.

All at once, the praying stopped. "Are you okay, dude? You look like you’re gonna throw up. Were you up on Forty-Two?"

"Yeah," Finn said thinly. An hour ago he’d wandered up there for about three minutes before deciding that he could be more useful somewhere that didn’t make his head vibrate like a wine glass. Someone at Kilpi must have panicked and put all three shifts on duty at once, but it was backfiring spectacularly: uniformed people who didn’t know each other, some of them horrifically underslept, thronged the halls, tripping over each other and looking for things to do. He’d found this guy wandering, and enlisted him to help guard the security room on Twelve. 

"Look, if you want to go to the infirmary," the elf said, "just send someone else here to cover for you. Or not. I think they’re being paranoid. We’ve got the Ylvisåkers. We got the three in the plane. We got the girl. It’s not like they have an army."

"Have you ever dealt with the Ylvisåkers?" Finn demanded. 

"Last time I saw them, they were in diapers."

Finn’s voice rose an octave. "Seriously?"

The elf laughed. "The Aruviel thing happened while I was in high school. I got curious and went to their stage show. They did this skit where they dressed up as babies. They’re just these two tiny goofy nerdy humans. I mean, I don’t know what the truth is, but Alpha’s wrong about everything else. And every time I see Ylvis in the _Chronicle_ , I think of them in bonnets and diapers, turning the stage into this giant Jolly Jumper. What about you? You ever run into ‘em?"

“A few times," Finn said wryly. "Underestimating them tends not to go well for people. So I think I’ll just stay here."

"Suit yourself, then. Think you can hold off Ylvis: A Horde if I go and get us some coffee?"

Finn pulled out his wallet and handed the man some notes. "Coffee and a sandwich would be just perfect."

His compatriot was gone for twenty minutes. Finn had very mixed feelings about his return. The elf handed him a cup and a sandwich, and tried to give him change, but Finn said, "Keep that. Thanks."

"I see you managed to hold the fort?"

"No," Finn said, with a little laugh. The coffee was terrible, but the sugar and caffeine did what they were supposed to do. "A couple of ne’er-do-wells advanced upon me, and without you, I had no choice but to let them in. They’re shutting down all the security as we speak."

"Nice," the elf said. 

The lights in the corridor went out, emergency lights came on, and alarms started to blare.

"What the...?"

Finn said, "I wasn’t kidding."

With shaking hands, the elf fumbled in his uniform, and found his monocle. "Dude!" Then he reached for his burner. "I am so sorry, man, but I have to--"

The door they’d been guarding opened. A hand emerged from the darkness, and fell on his wrist. "By Tamfana and Berchte and Baduhenna, this are permission not to."

"N-Ned?"

"Ned and Drel are on Three," Finn said. "They’d probably appreciate a rescue before everything goes down." He tugged gently, and the elf relinquished the weapon.

Persille emerged with Brynjar, slipping the inscriber back into her pocket. The elf’s eyes got large. "Your daughter... she’s still on Three too, isn’t she?"

Persille’s tail darted out, and he shied away from it. She touched Finn instead. Finn said, "That’s not a thing you have to worry about. Just get everyone you can out of here."

Finn wasn’t sure that the elevators would still be working, but when Persille pressed the button, the green arrow lit up in the darkness.

***

The scientist who approached the brothers was a petite bespectacled svartalfr woman who held up the ID tag around her neck, waving it at both of them. It identified her as Dr. Jenny Grevling. "I need to get in there," she said. "We just got confirmation from the last anchor site: the web is hanging by a thread."

"What are you going to do?" Vegard asked. "They say it can’t be shut down."

"I can’t shut it down, but I can stop the feed to the sympathets. Putting the coils on standby should make it more stable. _Please_ let me by. I’ve been saying for weeks we should do this, but of course they wait ‘til the whole system is on the brink of disaster..."

"Yeah, go," Bård said, letting her get at the door, which opened with a glyph that she entered handily onto the touchpad.

"We were supposed to ask her who authorized her," Vegard reminded him when she was on the walkway.

: _What, in case she’s an infiltrator?_ :

Suddenly, there was the sound of something massive powering down. Some of the lights went out. Bård and Vegard looked at each other.

The air was suddenly very, very still. 

The containment vortices were among the spells that had been deactivated. A great sound built from below, and then a warm ozone-scented wind plucked at them, stirring their hair. "Go time!" Vegard cried over the growing roar of magic, pulling open the door, which no longer needed a glyph. 

"You’re going into that?" Bård demanded, screaming to be heard. The wind had climbed, was now tugging at their clothing. It snatched Vegard’s cap off his head and sent it whirling into the maelstrom.

"I'll be fine," Vegard promised. "Nothing to latch onto, remember? You stay here, though. I’ll need you."

Dr. Grevling was standing on the walkway, clinging to the railing as gale-force winds tore at her. She was shouting something. 

Vegard fought his way onto the walkway, and got an arm around her, and started to lead her back to the glass barrier. "I didn’t do it!" she yelled into his ear. Her eyes were streaming. "It just, it just, I hadn’t even logged in and everything went kablooey. But it wasn’t me, I swear. I’m not one of _them_!"

"I know, I know," he soothed. He hunched over to lower his centre of gravity, edging them both forward with an iron grip on the railing. "I’m gonna take you back to the doors. And my brother will be there, and he’ll make sure you get back onto the floor safely, and then you run, okay? Get out of here as fast as you can." He reached the end of the walkway, and opened the glass door. Bård beckoned to her.

Her eyes were enormous behind her glasses. "You should get out too," she told Vegard. "Both of you. This is gonna blow. There’s nothing anyone can do."

Vegard squeezed her hand. "I can undo the spells."

"What?"

"I _am_ one of _them_ , and I’m going to do my best to keep everyone safe."

She clutched at his sleeve. "It’s suicide!"

He grinned at her. "I have a secret weapon." He turned away then, crept back across the walkway on his knees, and huddled on the platform. Somewhere here was the pivot spell, but if he activated the extra level of glamour penetration on his contacts, there was an excellent chance that the ambient magic would white out his vision entirely. 

The base of the pedestal the monitor sat on was a solid silver dome, inscribed with a spiral. Vegard was willing to bet that was it.

: _Bård, ready?_ :

Bård was watching him through the glass, hands cupped to his eyes to eliminate glare. And closing in on him from behind was a small army of uniformed guards.

: _BÅRD!_ :

***

Bård whipped around and found himself facing a dozen or more Kilpi people, weapons drawn, faces tense. He reached into his memory, drawing out red and silver revenge. He could feel Vegard in the back of his mind, impressed.

Someone fired, and he deflected the searing heat. 

He _pushed_ , and the security people reeled backwards, some losing their footing and firing their weapons harmlessly into the air. That gave him an idea, and he bent the wind at them, blowing the rest of them over, setting the ones who were already down rolling away from the sink. It was effective, non-lethal, and awfully fun. 

He turned back to where Vegard stood on the platform, whipped by the wind and looking terribly small. Bård set his jaw, and braced himself. : _Ready._ :

His brother reached into his mind and his magic with fingers of agony. Then Vegard closed the connection, and Bård felt guilty relief. 

A wave of white light passed through everything. There was a sense of loosening, and the timbre of the roar changed as the anchor web let go. 

Bård glanced behind him. Some of the security officers were recovering, and others were pouring in from the elevator and the stairwell. He hit them with another wave, weaker this time, and quickly stepped behind the glass door. 

Vegard was gesturing wildly at him. He reopened their link, and the pain came back. : _Go back, Bård! It’ll take you apart!_ : 

: _I’ll stay back here,_ : Bård promised. : _I just want something between me and them._ : 

Vegard tucked his chin down momentarily before raising his head and squaring his shoulders. : _Ready?_ : 

***

: _Ready,_ : Bård thought back at him, keeping his eyes on the floor behind them.

Vegard took a couple of deep breaths. Fortunately, he’d built a career on performing under pressure. Hugging the pedestal, he dragged himself to his feet in front of the monitor, which helpfully informed him that there had been a containment failure, that the sink was no longer being fed, and that numerous other security systems were down, and that he should initiate backup containment procedures as soon as possible. He logged in with the information the queen had given him.

Off to the side, the elevator doors opened again and three uniformed officers spilled out at a dead run. One of them, the woman, was yelling wordlessly, but Vegard didn’t even register her presence.

Reaching into Bård’s mind again, he used borrowed magic to draw the glyphs he’d spent his week in Øvre Årdal practicing again and again. The first one made it clear that there would be a chain of glyphs, and when he had drawn it on the touchpad, a dialogue box popped up. 

_Are you sure you want to create a layered sequence? Yes / Create another kind of sequence / Cancel_

_Yes._

The second addressed the magic bounded by the power sink. 

_Are you sure you want to apply your commands to all the magic in the reservoir? Yes / Back / Cancel_

_Yes._

The third glyph voided the power sink. 

_THIS COMMAND WILL EMPTY THE RESERVOIR! ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO EMPTY THE RESERVOIR? Yes, I understand the risks / Back / Help / Cancel (recommended)_

_Yes._

The fourth and final glyph would trigger the chain of spells. 

_Are you sure you wish to initiate this sequence? Yes, initiate this sequence / Add another glyph / Back / Help / Cancel_

Vegard made himself wait for a second, and double-checked everything. 

_Yes._

The screen around the dialogue box started to flash. 

_YOU ARE IN THE PATH YOU HAVE CHOSEN FOR THE DISCHARGE OF THE RESERVOIR. THIS WILL RESULT IN EXPOSURE TO LETHAL AMOUNTS OF RAW MAGIC. ARE YOU SURE THAT YOU WISH TO CONTINUE? Yes / Choose another trajectory / Help / Cancel (STRONGLY recommended)_

Bård leaned heavily against the glass door, red threads of light crawling over its surface, while half a dozen security officers hammered on it. Vegard looked to him. Bård looked tense and desperate. Vegard turned away. He would feel better with one more check, but there wasn’t time. He called on Bård’s magic once last time. 

_Yes._

Vegard slammed the door in his mind.

The spell dispersed into the maelstrom, which surged instantly up to meet him. Suddenly Vegard was awash in cascades of raw magic, thundering from the power sink, into and through him. He felt a searing, and had a moment to wonder what that was all about before he realized, as it started to pull him to shreds, that undoing the anchor web had released the spell on _him_ , and now the wild magic had something to grab onto--only the tiniest foothold, a trickle of power from the tattered edges of his mind, and that kept him from immediate annihilation, but it was still eroding him like water over a rock as it blasted through him. He went to his knees, fists to his temples, as if that would help him hold himself together.

Then there were arms around him, and the door in his mind was open, and there was a mind wound tightly around his own. Bård was here. One puny little human mind wasn’t going to be enough, and Bård's mind, which still had all of its access points intact, was already fraying, but Vegard was selfishly glad that at least he wouldn’t go out alone. The brothers clung to each other, ignoring the shattering of the glass door behind them, too busy dissolving in the hard blue light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Hydro Aquatic and Vir2l Vision's "Vigor" (Cold Blue remix) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGPsN9mUj4


	35. Moments of Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One note / Escape / Messages delivered

Kilpi uniforms, five of them, stole onto the walkway to the platform where the two brothers huddled, arms around each other, at the centre of a geyser of magic that was taking them apart. Two burners were drawn, and then wrenched away. There was mutiny. A scuffle. A stripping of two glamours and one small but powerful shielding spell. Two Kilpi officers stumbled back from the walkway onto solid ground, barely ahead of the lashing of a mechanical tail.

Bård and Vegard were caught and held, the disparate bits of them snagged and dragged out of the maelstrom and gathered up and gently patted back into shape again. That was a dual effort, but then Brynjar clumsily pushed Vegard behind him and took his place channelling the wild magic, while Finn hauled Bård to the other side of the small platform and wove a shield around both brothers. This done, he shattered the dome of the roof, pulling the pieces downward into the pit. And with the blue light mingling with the afternoon sun on his upturned face, Brynjar broadcast the magic first and foremost to the thousands of people from whom it had been stolen. 

Persille had positioned herself at the head of the walkway a safe distance from the geyser, tail whipping back and forth, cutting attachments flashing in the blue light. Finn turned and fired bolts of self-doubt at the officers who crossed the threshold, creating a wall of angst-ridden Alpha personnel milling around the only approach. Stalemate. It was good enough for now. It would have to be.

Vegard, head swimming, mind raw and still crackling with more magic than was comfortable, slumped against his brother and his cousins. There was a hand on his head, and he didn’t know whose it was, but it was good there. 

He looked up, at the insect-eyed apparatus around him. Things were taking a distressingly long time to process: his thoughts were stretched out of shape, but he’d worked under worse conditions than this. And... yes. Yes.

: _Bard, I need you._ :

: _I need you too, Vegard._ :

: _Great. I was thinking of going for those glowy round bits. All of them._ : There was a flavor of foggy surprise from his brother. : _Why, what were you thinking?_ :

: _Not thinking; just feeling._ : Bård perked up a little bit. : _But you think we should aim for the glowy bits?_ :

: _Yeah. You’re better at acting on all of one kind of thing._ : 

: _I used up my memory magic holding people off, though. I’m too_ tired _to be angry enough._ : 

: _It’s all right. Just help me aim._ : 

Vegard nudged at Finn’s shield, and Finn seemed to understand, because he modified it for them. The tendrils Vegard reached out with were the equivalent of charred stumps, but they were already elongating and reconstituting, fed and restored by the magic that raged around them. Bård reached out too, his own magic slim and graceful and willowy, and guided him to the sympathets. 

Vegard pulled himself up so that he was sitting upright. He was dizzy and fatigued, and he started to shake almost immediately, but he could feel the parts of his mind that he thought he'd lost forever. Above him, someone put a steadying hand on his shoulder, and beside him, Bård gave him a shoulder to lean on. The brothers glanced at each other, opened their mouths, and sang a single note, clear and rich and sweet. 

At the last moment, Vegard realized that while the note he was holding in his mind was lower than what they were singing, the note that Bård was holding in his mind was higher. He was about to correct it, but then he reflected on the sheer range that would give them, and let it stand. And flexed into this new, far more expansive space. 

Bård grasped the possibilities of the sympathets a fraction of a second before his brother, and made a silent proposal, which Vegard accepted readily. Before the emotional field generators exploded, releasing their hold on a nation’s magical population, Ylvis hacked them to broadcast Vegard’s emotions as he sang. Across Norway and the whole of Scandinavia, everyone who had been infected with Alpha’s terror now experienced a moment of relief, renewal, and perfect joy. 

***

When the sympathets blew, all hell broke loose. Suddenly the platform was far less interesting to the Alpha people. A fresh round of alarms started up. Lab-coated workers darted back into the room and started slapping prefab repulsion glyphs on everything in sight before running away. Debris was falling into the rapidly emptying power sink and careening wildly out of it, now saturated with magic. Finn dipped into the stream of magic and suggested to the charged debris that it might be fun to actively seek out repulsion spells, which had been designed with uncharged material in mind. This damaged a lot of expensive equipment, and saved virtually everyone who still remained in the complex, save for an ancient svartalfr technician who collapsed after running out, and died of a series of heart attacks.

"I think we should go," Finn said. To no one in particular, he saw. Brynjar was clutching at the platform railing, still the centre of the geyser of raw power. Busy, then. Bård and Vegard were at his feet, slumped against each other and his knees. 

Sparks made him turn. Persille had dragged her tail against the cement to get his attention. She signed that she would grab one brother if he’d grab the other.

Finn held up one finger, as an indicator for her to wait. He leaned close to Brynjar, sticking his nose into the column of magic and telling it, _ordering_ it to heal. Then he extended the shield he’d woven all the way to the walkway. Persille got under one of Vegard’s arms, and Finn got under one of Bård’s arms, and together they tottered back onto solid ground, as far away from the pit as they could get. By the time they got to the banks of instruments, the brothers were walking mostly under their own power, and although they were pale and dazed, they were grinning. Then Persille signed that she was going for help, and followed the throng out, stopping to offer an arm to a hobbling technician.

***

Brynjar stood under the shards of the broken dome, drawing everything in, sending everything out. The stream of magic was thinning now. "All that power," Finn said softly.

"He’s giving it back, though, isn’t he?" Bård said.

"What he can," Finn agreed. 

Bård looked into the light and shuddered, hugging himself. "It was all, everything was coming apart, and then, and then..."

"How did you do it?" Vegard asked. 

"Finding the bits of you was easy," Finn said, "because they’re bits of us too. And then we... I guess we... Well, there’s no sense trying to go against it, but you just sort of, you know, use it to sail them home." 

"Like gliding?" Vegard suggested. 

Finn looked very relieved. "Like gliding."

As the brothers watched, Brynjar drew the dregs into himself, his eyes flaring two different kinds of blue momentarily as the light faded. He sniffed, and listed a little against the railing. Then he made a little pulling motion with both hands. Suddenly, in place of a too-large Kilpi uniform, he was wearing jeans and his duster and a green t-shirt that said, “My other disability is a bad attitude.” Something rocketed in through the hole in the dome, headed straight for him, and he caught it. His walking stick. He adjusted the lapels of his duster, then leaned heavily on the stick, and walked off the platform, towards them. He did it _through_ the railing, limping across thin air until his sneakers squeaked on the tiles. At their stares, he said, “It were very hard work, and I are tired. I haved no wish to take the long way."

"What the hell are you?" Bård breathed.

Brynjar turned to him, mismatched eyes dancing, and gave him a tired smile. "I'm you, but Brynjar."

In the vast ravaged space, the four of them were alone, facing each other. Vegard frowned and reached out, and gently, gently traced one of Finn’s bruises. "Finn..."

"Vegard," Finn said, tears welling up in his eyes, "I am so, so sorry."

"What?" Vegard squawked, fishing around in his pocket for a tissue. "No no no no no!" He found a Mama Mia Pizza napkin, and handed it over. " _Why?_ "

"For getting you into this. For turning you into a criminal. For not barging into that courtroom and, and _stopping_ them. For not being in time to stop the extraction. For not saving you the way you saved me."

Vegard's hands fluttered. "No no no, Finn, I didn't want you to do that. I didn't even want you to try. I didn't want you anywhere near this." He gestured. "Ask Bård. I was furious when I found out you were even here."

"It's true," Bård said.

"Vegard? If... if it wasn't that, I don't understand what I did."

Vegard put firm hands on his shoulders. "No, no, no, Finn. It wasn’t you, it was never you."

"Someone was sending threats to Melantha," Bård explained. "She told Vegard to stay away from you, and to not say anything."

"What?" Finn stepped back, face stricken, eyes enormous. "Someone was threatening my fiancée?" His voice, soft at first, rose in pitch. "All this time? And you didn’t tell me?" His expression turned from stricken to stormy. He took a couple of deep breaths, and launched himself at Vegard. 

Bård grabbed him and held him back. "Whoa-whoa-whoa... "

Finn subsided, fists clenched, breathing hard. "I wouldn’t have hit him," he told Bård. "I just wanted to make him flinch."

"Good luck with that," Bård said. His fist darted out and caught Vegard’s arm. 

"Ow!" Vegard said crossly, swaying a little, rubbing the sore spot.

"See?" Bård said, doing it again. "Slow reflexes." He punched out again, and when Vegard caught one fist in annoyance, Bård hit him a couple of times with the other before turning back to Finn with a there-now-you-see look. "It takes a lot to make him flinch."

Vegard glowered, and punched him in the shoulder.

"You don’t get to do that!" Bård said, grinning and rubbing his shoulder. 

"I don’t get to do that to _Finn_ ," Vegard said reasonably. He turned to Finn. "If you want to hit me, I guess I deserve it, but I draw the line at designating a proxy."

"But why didn’t you just tell me, Vegard? I would have understood."

"She asked me not to. So I didn’t tell, but there was a picture of the threat on the phone I gave you. I thought if you found it, it wouldn’t be telling you, and it wouldn’t be my fault.” 

“I’m not going to snoop in your phone!” Finn said, aghast. “That would be...”

Vegard shook his head. “I felt bad about it after. She told me that being around me was dangerous for you, and well, it was. But she said that you wouldn’t let that stop you, and she was right. Bård told me about you getting beaten up for going to that rally."

"It were not the rally," Brynjar said. "It were for breakifying the spell draining my godhead. Which, Finn, you would had recognized on Vegard.”

Finn blinked a couple of times. “And broken immediately. If I’d known, I would have ruined everything.”

“The retaliation-beating were my fault. I should had kept a better watch after, but I were so overjoyed to get my life back, I were not looking."

"Brynjar, that wasn't your fault," Finn protested. "It was... Kilpi, I guess. Trying to keep their secret. I know one of the things I have to get better at is sticking up for myself, but I'm not your responsibility." His gaze swivelled to Vegard. "Or yours." Then to Bård. "Or yours. Or Melantha's. If they were threatening her too... " His eyes softened. "She didn’t _want_ me to stop doing what I was doing, did she? She didn’t want me to get hurt, and she didn’t want to tell me what to do, and she didn’t want to admit how much they scared her."

"I’ve been quietly fuming at her ever since I found out," Bård said, "but when you put it like that... especially, Finn, considering you were ready to go to jail--"

"You _what_?" Vegard shrilled.

"Oh," Finn said in a small voice. "Maria said you didn’t know that was what I thought I was agreeing to."

"I didn’t at the time," Bård said. He turned to Vegard. "Brynjar gave me your Faebook password."

"Oh gods, Brynjar," Finn moaned.

"I made promises and taked confidences," Brynjar said sternly. "Seeing their reasons I keeped them as you suffered, but now that they has outlived their usefulnesses, you will talk to each other." He gestured sweepingly at them with his walking stick. "You will use your words like grownups."

"Talking about this stuff isn’t really a guy thing," Vegard said, moving his shoulders uncomfortably. 

Finn shook his head in an almost convulsive motion. "I’m done talking," he said, his voice sounding oddly choked. He looked from one brother to the other, and lunged at Vegard. This time Vegard did flinch, and Finn caught him in a tight hug. "Forgiven," he whispered. "Always already forgiven." 

Bård put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry too, Finn. For..." 

Finn pulled him into the hug before he could finish. "Are we okay?" he demanded, softly. "All of us?"

"Not yet," Vegard said, and pulled an arm free. "Brynjar, come on!"

Brynjar's smile was like the sun coming out, and he limped over and joined the small circle. He bowed his head, and his eyes overflowed. "I trusted badly," he said in a small voice. "All I tells you, I learned hardly..."

"Shut up," Bård said, hugging Brynjar tighter.

And then he of the fast reflexes shoved them all to the ground, so that the bullet caught air above them.

"Gentlemen!" a voice cried, almost jovially, as they scrambled to see who had fired the shot. "Pray tell, what is the meaning of this?"

Two people were standing on the tiled floor, near the entrance. Bård and Vegard saw only a pair of well dressed lios alfar. The one who had spoken was the man. Brynjar saw first and foremost that they were two people who had gone badly wrong, and who wished to do them harm. It was Finn who recognized media giants Ardriel and Lavinia Morael, who had bought Alpha ten years ago and turned the most trusted voice in elven journalism into a paranoid media powerhouse. He had been to parties with them. They had shaken his hand and congratulated him on his show. "We know what you’ve been doing," Finn said, getting slowly to his feet. "We made it stop."

"It’s not going to stop," Lavinia said. She had an interview show that Finn had tried to watch once, as research. "You’ve slowed us down a bit, but we’ll rebuild. Terrorists don’t seem to get that blowing up a broadcast facility doesn’t make us all change our minds and go home."

"It might if you were broadcasting what to think," Vegard said from where he knelt. He grimaced in pain, and pitched to the side, and Ardriel’s gun frosted over. The elf jerked his hand away from it, dropping it on the ground, and it shattered. "See, I didn’t want to make it go hot, or I’d ignite the gunpowder." Putting a hand on Bård’s shoulder to support himself, he stood, grinning foolishly. "I know what you keep saying about me, but I don’t actually want to hurt anyone."

"You think this doesn’t hurt anyone?" Lavinia demanded. "Two of the _foundations_ of civilization are a free press, and on the ability to punish the wicked." She didn’t sound alarmed. She sounded like she was delivering a sound bite. "If you don’t have those, you have chaos."

"Don’t talk to them," Ardriel said. He had taken off his silk scarf and was winding it around his frostbitten hand. "They’re not rational; they’ve embraced an ideology of death. You can’t convince people like that. The dálki have this place surrounded. It’ll all be over soon." He glared down at them. "You’re going to face justice, all four of you."

Brynjar used the stick to lever himself to his feet. "Ah. Let’s us talk about justice, shall we?" He limped towards the couple, and they drew closer together. 

It was the most curious thing: Lavinia Morael was an even six feet in heels, and Ardriel Morael was six-foot-four. Brynjar Kvam was Bård’s height, five-eleven. And yet somehow, he was looking down at the Moraels, and the Moraels were looking up at him. 

"Ardriel and Lavinia Morael," Brynjar said, his voice quiet in a way that echoed through the great broken-domed space. "You has lied to and stolen from the people you are supposed to service. You has thieved our magic, storing it up and infecting our people with fear and hatred. You has hurted me. You has hurted my friends. You has terrorized the woman who are to be my doomsister and arrangementated the beating of my brother. You has wounded my cousin and vexicated his family." He shaped his fingers into the doomsign. The sky above the dome darkened, and the wind picked up.

"Brynjar?" Finn said in a small voice.

Bård scrambled to his feet. "Brynjar, you don’t need to do... whatever you’re about to do." 

The grey eye seemed to have pinned the Moraels to the spot. "Doesn’t I, Bård?" Brynjar murmured.

"I can’t tell you about _you_ ," Vegard said, "but I don’t want any of this done on my account."

"But I very much wants to do it, Vegard." 

"Brynjar," Finn said again, and although his voice was very soft, it was no longer small, but as big as the mountains. Bård and Vegard glanced at him in surprise. He said, sounding quite normal again, "You’re better than this. Right? Because the standards are higher."

Brynjar’s gaze intensified, and the air darkened until the grey eye was luminous. The Moraels cowered before him, the wind raking at them. "Lavinia Farmak Codiciosa Morael and Ardriel Lobamokk Twyllodrus Morael, I saying this unto you with all the authority I possessify as Brynjar Kvam himself." He brandished the doomsign at them... and let it collapse around a middle finger, held aloft. "You run a _poor_ news franchise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Lunatic Calm's "Sound of the Revolution" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5a8kz8pdV0


	36. Restoration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The interrogation / The doctor / In which dinner is eaten and several transactions are completed

The outer doors banged open, and dálki streamed in, brandishing crossbows. "Hold!"

"Arrest them!" Lavinia brayed, gesturing at the two sets of brothers. And a team of four did break off and head in their general direction, but the rest crowded around her and her husband. "Lavinia Farmak Codiciosa Morael and Ardriel Lobamokk Twyllodrus Morael," one recited, "by right of law and binding, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud, unfair competition, and disregard for public safety with the intent to profit. Under the Sigil of Takaus, you are bound by the domain of Scandinavia. Your oathkeeping being in question, this binding will serve as your word. Attempts to tamper with the binding will result in the temporary removal of your free will. Do you understand?"

Vegard turned away, wrapping his arms around himself. "I don’t want to see this," he said quietly.

"Understandable, Mr. Ylvisåker," one of the dálki officers said, and put a friendly hand on his shoulder. "We just have some questions for you four. Separately, if you don’t mind." Vegard looked momentarily stricken, and the officer said, " _Just_ questions. Mab turned over all her files. We're not after you."

Half an hour later, Bård had finished giving his own Sealed testimony. One of the things they’d questioned him about was the battle between the hulderfolk and the Kilpi personnel. The security officer he’d magicked had died on the way to the hospital. Bård had been genuinely shaken by that, but he’d assured them that the spell he’d put on the man was a healing spell, or at least a feeble attempt at one. This seemed to satisfy the officers. One of them told him, "He was probably a goner anyway, but you’ve got to watch those Underjordiske spells. They suck a person’s energy, and if they’re too badly hurt they’ll just die."

After that Bård went out to rejoin Finn and Brynjar, who had found spinny chairs and Paracet and espresso, and were watching the dálki gather evidence and making helpful suggestions that were thoroughly ignored. Then he felt something flare and burn out in the back of his mind, and followed it unerringly to a break room. 

He knocked and entered without waiting to be asked. Vegard sat hunched in a chair, eyelids lowered, staring at his lap. He did not look up, not when the door opened, and not when the dálki officer shook him by the shoulder and told him his brother was here. "Out," Bård said.

"He’s not in any trouble," the officer protested. "I think he’s just nervous and frustrated. I get it, believe me."

"Come on out," Bård said, gently but firmly. He held the door open, and closed it behind her. 

Later, after they’d given him some peace and quiet, when he had hot chocolate and a sandwich in his belly, and Bård right there, Vegard told his story. But between the nervousness he felt around the dálki and the web of secrets he’d entangled himself in and his exhaustion and his getting flustered when something went wrong, he’d been getting zapped by the Seal of Luotettavuus again and again. Without the Seal, with Bård gauging his reactions and sometimes murmuring encouragement or asking clarifying questions and sometimes shushing the officer, it all came out. And then they put the Seal on him again and asked him if he could swear that everything he'd just said was true to the best of his understanding, and _that_ he did gladly, with no trouble. 

At the end, the officer looked like she was about to tell them that they could go, but then she looked from one to the other and said, "I’m going to give your statement to the riddari. Thank you, gentlemen. Feel free to leave when you’re able, but don’t stick around here too long; it’s still a crime scene."

Vegard, whose forehead was resting on the table, nodded.

The dálki officer left, and Finn edged in, his posture apologetic. Brynjar was close behind him. "The, uh, the-the _queen_ is here," Finn said. 

As he was saying it, Mab swept past him into the room. She was a small pear-shaped svartalfr woman in faded jeans, Doc Martens, and an elven-cut jacket over the ugliest sweater Bård had ever seen. He would have guessed her to be in her early fifties. Finn towered over her. And yet, she was unmistakably the Queen of Air and Darkness.

She put her hand on Vegard’s shoulder. "Vegard, it’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh," she said. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, and gave her a salute. She laughed, and hugged him. "As I recall, you seem to prefer these. Well done. All of you. Ah! You must be Bård. Thank you."

"You got what you needed?" Bård said, keeping his voice cool and professional.

"Between the information we amassed and presented to the dálki, and the evidence they’re going to find here, I think extraction just stopped being a viable punishment for crimes." She dropped her voice, smiling. "Not only that, but I’ve been running some what-ifs by a nephew of mine, who has been running them by a treasured family friend, and if there is a good chance that people’s decisions were influenced by the poison that Alpha was feeding them, there would be a very, very good reason to declare the results of November’s election null and void, and call another one." 

She seemed to be waiting for a response. Vegard, who had sat back down and slumped across the table, his cheek pillowed on one arm, smiled faintly. Bård had tucked himself into a corner and his eyes were already half closed, but he flashed her a thumbs up. Finn was running his fingers very lightly over the bridge of his nose and wincing whenever he touched skin. He nodded appreciatively. Brynjar, making sparks leap from finger to finger, looked not to have heard her at all. 

"Right," she said. "This isn’t the place or time for that conversation. Mr. Kvam, I understand that you have Sleipnir. Will she take all four of you?"

"There’s five of us," Vegard said.

"Persille will ride with me, if you don’t mind."

"She will takes four," Brynjar said. 

"Very well, then. Have her meet us in the parking lot and follow me."

There was a knock on the door. Brynjar opened it and threw his arms around Sleipnir. She whickered, and snuffled his hair. Then she extended her neck, closed her teeth very gently on Vegard’s collar, and deposited him on her back.

***

They travelled over the old roads, the queen and Persille in a Tesla Model S, the brothers and the cousins on horseback, until they reached a forest so still that it seemed to be holding its breath, and a great gothic pile of a castle. "Side entrance," the queen said. "I don’t stand on protocol, and it’s less walking." She handed Vegard off Sleipnir’s back, and the others followed them in through a plain wooden door and up some stairs.

Vegard stumbled, and she righted him. "You need to see a doctor," Mab told him as they started down a corridor.

"I will," he assured her. "It'll be the second thing I do when I get home."

"No, no, _no_." She took him by the shoulders, and propelled him forward until the others were out of sight and hearing. At the corners of his vision, the castle rearranged itself, until she was steering him into a small sitting room. "Wait here," she said, pushing him into an armchair. 

There were books on a shelf in the corner, and in a minute he was going to get up and go look at them, but right now it was nice to just sit here and enjoy having a whole mind again. It still felt strange, but _good_ strange, big and rich and wonderful. 

He opened his eyes, feeling languidly delicious. He must have dozed off, head back, hands folded in his lap. An ethereally beautiful blonde woman was looking down at him. "Hello, Vegard," she singsonged. Even her voice was gorgeous. "I'm Nighean. I hear you've had some adventures. We're just going to have a look at you, all right?"

She brought her hand up, and all of a sudden Vegard was a lot more awake. Nighean had talons. And she was wearing green scrubs. The guys in Innilokun Ríki had delighted in scaring the human by telling him about all the horrific creatures in the magical world. "Baobhan sith," he said in a small voice.

"Mm-hm." With brisk gentle hands, keeping her talons well away from his face, she seized Vegard's chin and tilted it up; looked into his eyes; turned his head this way and that. "And a surgeon is a woman with knives, a willingness to use them on you, and a thorough knowledge of all the ways you could die, and yet... Brace yourself, now, you're going to feel some discomfort." 

When she put it that way, he felt a little better, but it didn't change what his fellow prisoners had said, that a baobhan sith could split a man's mind open like a cantaloupe.

That was exactly what she did.

It didn't hurt, precisely, and the examination lasted only a minute or two, but it was awfully intimate. She'd seen _everything_.

She burned away his panic, and eased the pieces of his psyche back together. "Calm yourself, Vegard. I've been working for the Unseleighe for nigh on a thousand years now. The little sins that keep you awake at 3 AM are the equivalent of using the wrong fork at dinner to me."

"Then why are you making that face?" he said from behind his hand.

"I need you to tell me, what bloody idiot did _this_ to you?" 

"What, my magic?"

"Whatever you paid for this is too much," she said. "Did they at least tell you about aftercare?"

"I didn't pay," Vegard said. "I had my magic extracted, and it came back like this."

"You expect me to believe _this_ happened with no help whatsoever?"

"Not _no_ help. When it came back, I used it to reach into the outflow from the power sink so I could destroy the equipment. Well... some of it was mine anyway, right? So I only took what I needed to do it fast, but it feels like I took more than I was used to using on my own."

"You reached into that-- My gods." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Well. Gods. You've managed to blast open enough of a connection to turn yourself into a Level Eight."

"Eight?" Vegard shrilled.

"Congratulations." This sounded like sarcasm. "What were you before?"

"Two," he said. "Barely."

"Gods. You shouldn't have done that. If you could see what you've done to yourself right now... "

"If I hadn't done it, they could just start stealing people's magic again."

"Well, it's possible for you to keep your Level Eight," she sighed, "but it's going to take rigorous exercise. You'll have to work the connection every day. What happened to you is not a good thing to do. Especially for a _human_. If you let it lapse, things are going to want to shrink back to their original size, and then some. Unless you do some hard wizarding every day, you're going to wind up losing even the functionality you had before. Do you understand?"

"Hard magic every day," Vegard said. "Or scar tissue builds up, is that what it's like?"

"That's... a pretty good analogy, actually. I might use that the next time someone comes to me with mods like this. Or not. Usually I don't _want_ to tell them how they can make something so monumentally foolish work for them."

"If the magic goes away," he said carefully, "I think that's okay. I think it's really cool, but I don't _need_ it. I haven't even been able to use it for most of the time I did have it. But I used music to make it, and music is really important to me." He let the unspoken question hang in the air.

She probed him with a tendril of magic. The touch made him twitch his shoulders, and finally flinch. "No guarantees," she said. "It could be just fine, if you didn't keep up your magic, or you could lose it."

He exhaled, jutting out his lower lip so that his breath made the stray curl on his forehead dance. "So. Hard magic. Every day. Like what?"

"You could probably manage transfiguration of suspensions," she said slowly, tapping her chin lightly with one claw. "Only no, don't. Get someone to teach you that, don't just try to do it on your own, or you'll nuke yourself sky high. Same with healing, you'd want training or you're likely to kill someone."

"I have first aid," he offered.

"I'm talking eight years of medical wizardry at NUA," she said. "If you get through that, though, as a Level Eight physician you'll be set. Probably make it onto the Branch List... "

"I don’t want to be a doctor," Vegard said. "I just want to be able to dress like a woodland creature and sing songs about genitalia again."

"You could do lifting," she said. "It's a little prosaic, but if you just lift enough weight every night to work up a sweat, you should be fine."

"Like... " Vegard looked at his hands.

She pointed at a porcelain jar on the mantel, and it rose into the air. "Like that."

"Can I... ?" He tried to take it from her, fists clenched in his lap, and he sent it zooming to the ceiling, where it split, showering them in potpourri and chunks of porcelain that exploded when they hit the stone floor. Vegard peeked out from behind the arm he'd thrown up to protect his eyes. "I am so sorry." 

Nighean shook her head. "I'll have someone clean it up. No, not you. You sit. That's not an unusual problem for someone in your situation. You'll have to get used to being a lot stronger. If you had standing, I would recommend you to a good magiotherapist to work on that."

"I could pay," Vegard said.

She shook her head. "My advice is first to get your standing, and second to start in an empty room in your dwelling, with objects that aren't going to damage your ceiling or floors or walls. Get a feel for how much force it takes to lift something. Learn to set things down gently. Work up to heavier objects. At Level Eight, you're looking at somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred and fifty, two hundred pounds."

Vegard drew in a breath, and a light came on in his eyes. "So... a person."

"I see that look on your face, and you'd better get permission! They may have just suspended extractions, but all you need for your magic to go away is a couple of idle weeks, and I'm sure they could manage that."

Vegard frowned at her, affronted. "I wouldn't do _that_." Then the grin came back, and Doctor Nighean MacAllaidh, who passed the _Alpha Chronicle_ every day without picking it up but had still been prepared for a sullen, hardened criminal, couldn't help but grin with him. "I can _fly_."

***

Nighean siphoned some of the excess magic off Vegard, which stopped his head from ringing so loudly. Then she neatened up the edges of the new access point, which corresponded not to the old access point, but to the area they’d punched out for the extraction, and when Nighean realized _that_ she became nicer still. The neatening up hurt awfully, but it did make him feel more like himself in a way that he couldn't quite articulate. She promised him that sleep and a few days to heal would work wonders. Then she led him to the dining hall, where groups sat here and there along the table, and where his brother and his cousins and the queen were enjoying suckling pig and roast pheasant and smoked salmon and wild mushrooms and four kinds of nachos.

Bård turned in his chair, wiped his hands on a napkin, and greeted Vegard with a hug, lifting him off his feet with a brotherly growl. "You’re _you_ again."

"I was always _me_ ," Vegard said, "but all other things being equal, I’d rather be me with music."

"You’re okay, though?" Bård pressed.

"Yeah. I have exercises I have to do, but they look like they'll be fun. You?"

"Good. Naps were taken."

Finn was at his elbow now, looking far less battered. In dimmer light, his bruises might even pass for lack of sleep. He said nothing; only clung to Vegard in a tight hug, until Vegard pulled away, rubbing Finn's back vigorously. 

Brynjar did not get up, but motioned him over. He cocked his head and stared at Vegard, nodding slowly. "I were going to offer my services, but I think I needs not, for the moment. Feel you better?"

"I’ve got it back." Then Vegard grinned, and sang, " _I’ve got it back, baby!_ "

" _He’s got it back,_ " Bård agreed.

Meanwhile, the doctor had been speaking to the queen. Now she piled a plate high with salmon and nachos and a curious black gelatinous dish that no one else touched, and wandered off. Mab patted the seat at her right hand. "Vegard, come and sit. Tell me everything."

He sat, and spent the meal telling her about the workings of the power sink, modelling the whole setup in pork bones. Persille wandered over from somewhere else. She gave him a huge hug and signed that she was going to sleep for about a week now, but now that he knew where to find her he should keep in touch.

After they were stuffed, they retired to a lushly appointed drawing room, with wine and chocolates and furniture that Vegard thought would look much better slightly distressed. The men had offered to do the washing up, but the queen assured them that she had staff who would do that as soon as they themselves were finished eating their fill.

"I'd invite you to spend the night," she said, sitting in a comfortable chair, swirling a seven-hundred-year-old red wine around in its glass, "but I understand that you have families that you must be eager to get back to."

Vegard and Bård and Finn nodded. Brynjar might have looked a little wistful. It was hard to tell. 

"Vegard," she said, "you’ve surpassed all my expectations. Should my interests and your sense of what is right and fair intersect at any future point, would you consider working for me again?"

The room got very, very still. 

Vegard thought about it. Finally, he said, "Your Majesty, I had my music taken away. I missed a whole month of my own show. Finn did the best he could, but he’s not me and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. This operation threatened my livelihood and made me shirk my responsibilities and even took me away from my family for a little while."

The queen nodded. 

"I hope you understand me saying, never again during a season."

A smile spread across her features. "Of course, Vegard."

"And not without my brother being involved, or at least fully informed."

She inclined her head. "Understood. Bård, I'm sure you have spoken with your brother, but I too crave your pardon for what he put you through at my behest."

"Thank you," Bård said. "I don't know yet how I feel about you, but I'll always help _him_."

"That's as much as I can ask for." 

"Listen," Bård said, "can I ask a favour?"

"You can ask," she said, "although not everything is in my power to grant, and not everything that is in my power to grant is a good idea."

"There’s a family of selkies on Runde. And one human. They saved my life, and Kilpi hurt their son. I don’t know if they ever got their herring inoculant, or if they’ve already got the best possible prosthesis for Flyndre, but... something that would make their lives easier. Ask them."

She nodded, her mouth quirking. "They might not want favours from me, but I’ll send Persille when she’s had a few days off. How about you, Vegard? I wouldn’t want to agree to a favour for your brother, and not for you."

"I don’t know. If I could have asked in 2007, I would have said, look after Persille. But you did already, and thank you. So I don’t know. Can you bring back Audhild Kristtorn?"

The queen laughed bitterly. "If I could bring my sister-in-law back from the dead, I would have years ago."

"Then... I don’t know." He looked at Brynjar and Finn. "Could you guys use a favour?"

Finn glanced at Brynjar. "Brit?"

"No. Her fondest wish are for her parents, and I wouldst not see her refused. She have my love and friendship and protection, and should she need more in time, she will has it from me."

"What about her second fondest wish?" Finn pressed.

"A dinosaur." Brynjar frowned thoughtfully. "I couldst ask Huginn and Muninn to find her a nice bird..." 

Mab smiled. "Brynjar Kvam."

He shook himself, blinking. "Yes, My Lady."

"I’ve heard a lot about you. They say you’re a god."

He looked uncomfortable. "A little."

She inclined her head a little, and suddenly all the warmth was gone from her, and the thing in her eyes was ancient and blood-soaked. "You spared the Moraels."

He nodded.

"Would you care to explain that to me?"

He leaned forward, and put his wine down. "If thou knowest me truefully, My Lady, thou knowest I has struggled with what my godness mean and what it ought to mean. Justice are not mine alone. It belong to everybody, or it belong to nobody."

"In case you hadn't noticed, our justice is corrupt." Her voice was slow, a purr. "What do you do, little god, when the thing you call justice has fallen into the hands of tyrants and bullies and bigots?"

"My Lady, I are but a youngling, but I has been implanted with the history of the world. We had the justice of gods stronger and wiser than I, with millennias of experience and time to think things over. This we had, and we gived it up, and I thinks it is well done. If we would keep it from tyrants and bullies and bigots, we must never again giving it up to the hands of gods."

"I’m told your eye sees everything." 

"It do, My Lady. But I must knowing where to look, and even then, it show me only what is. It are to me to decide what to do, and I get it often wrong."

"When you look at me," she said softly, "what does your eye show you?"

Brynjar turned towards her. His eyes widened a little. And then they got very large, and scarlet crept into his cheeks. "Are this a test?"

"No. _That_ was the test. And you passed. Congratulations. Well, would you like to?"

"Oh, I wouldst," he breathed. 

"Very well." A smile touched her lips. "Go into the corridor. Due will to conduct you to where you can wait."

Brynjar nodded and took up his stick, and fled like a man pursued.

Vegard eyed Mab inquisitively, and when she only smiled at him, looked at Bård.

"Of course, this has _nothing_ to do with shoring up your reign," Finn said dryly.

"Don’t be silly," the queen said. "I know he’s not territorial, so don’t you be either. I’m much happier as a figurehead than I ever was as a ruler. But the chance to pluck the fruits of delight from the tree of love in the garden of joyous congress with a pretty someone who knows exactly what you want is never to be scorned."

"I didn’t even know he was straight," Bård said.

"He’s you," Vegard said, laughing. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"He differs from me on several salient points, in case you haven’t noticed, and I never did get a straight vibe from him."

"He’s still mulling it over," Finn sighed. He glared at the queen. "He doesn’t know what _he_ wants." 

"Perhaps not, but you just heard him indicate a clear willingness to begin sampling some options," she said with a small smile. "I promise, I will do everything in my power to leave your brother better than I found him, Finn dear."

"Ah," said Vegard. "And it can’t hurt that the new god in town is going to be _exceedingly_ grateful to you." 

"There is that," she agreed mildly, pouring another glass of wine. She returned her gaze to Finn. "And then there's you, Finn Weber. Created alongside Mr. Kvam. Acquitted yourself admirably, some would even say heroically, in last year’s Ragnarok scare. You and Brynjar have your show--quite incisive. I’m told you are cohabiting with Melantha Aruviel. And your name is curiously absent from anything to do with this affair. Not even a breath of scandal when the news of blood magic came out. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d gone respectable on us." 

"Quite against my will, My Lady."

"Ah. And what is it that prevents you from getting your hands dirty?"

"Us two," Vegard said, with a grin. "And his girlfriend."

"Fiancée," Bård corrected with an even broader grin.

" _Quite_ against my will," Finn repeated dryly, eyes roving to both of them before fixing again on Mab. "I don’t look for trouble, but there are people I care about, and sometimes caring about them means getting into trouble and I’m okay with that. Even when they’re not."

"There!" Vegard cried. "That’s what I’ve been trying to say." 

"But," Finn said slowly, carefully, "with all due respect, My Lady, I don’t answer to you, and I shouldn’t have to justify myself to you. I’m not going to be anyone’s pocket satirist."

She drew back, and grimaced. "There was a time when I would have had you flayed alive for your insolence," she said. "I and millions of others voted that time away, but there are occasions when I still catch myself acting like a queen. I’d give you permission to mock me when I overstep my bounds, but--"

"I don’t need it," Finn finished, smiling, but there was an edge to his voice.

She smiled back, and quaffed off the last of her wine. "Then, gentlemen, may I take my leave of you? It’s been a long day for all, and I fear what may happen if I leave Mr. Kvam too long alone in a room with a bed in it."

Vegard rose wearily, and got another hug. "Thanks for the help, Mab."

"Thank _you_ for the help, Vegard. You were only doing what I asked you to."

He shook his head. "No, no, no. You made me feel like I was doing something right again. I needed that. And, and if it wasn’t for that, all this might still be going on, right?"

"Or it would have blown up already," Bård put in, levering himself to his feet. 

"Quite so. A good evening to you, gentleman. You are welcome to partake of my hospitality for as long as you like, but I will not take it amiss if you would rather rejoin your loved ones as soon as possible." She inclined her head to them, and swept out.

"We should go," Finn said rapidly, already making for the door.

"Right." Bård clapped him on the shoulder. "Not nice to keep our families waiting. And _you’ve_ got a wedding to plan."

"It’s more than that," he said, leading them through the corridors. He got to a junction, seemed to decide something, and let out a low whistle. As the scuttle and scrabble of Sleipnir’s hooves filled the hall, he said, "Just to be safe, I think it would be more comfortable for everyone if we got as far out of Brynjar’s broadcast range as possible."

"Right," Bård said again, looking horrified.

"Oi-oi-oi. Let’s get out of here." Vegard pulled himself onto Sleipnir’s back, and scratched behind her ears for only a moment before pulling up Finn in front of him and Bård behind him. 

"Can we go back to Oslo, please?" Finn said. "As quickly as you can take us?"

Sleipnir snorted, took a running leap, and launched herself out of the nearest window, landing in the chill grey of the old roads. As she ran, over the rhythm of her hooves Bård started to sing a jaunty, wordless little travelling tune. Vegard, settling comfortably into the musical part of his mind, sang harmony. Then he realized that something was missing, and kicked at Finn’s calves until he joined in, voice soft and hesitant at first and then steadying. Vegard recognized the tune that the three of them were building together, and had to fight not to laugh, but his nose wrinkled in delight as he sang.

They were safe and whole and headed home, and all was well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Genesis' "After the Ordeal" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZU3AVyAFC4


	37. Epilogue: Introducing...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A week of headlines in _The Alpha Chronicle_ / The news

TERROR IN ØVRE ÅRDAL: RADICALS TAKE OUT PEACE DIVISION-AUTHORIZED SECURITY HEADQUARTERS  
Ylvisåker brothers sighted as fear grips sleepy mountain town

THUGS! Riots spread as criminals protest new security laws

Dálki: YLVISÅKERS WILL NOT BE CHARGED IN ØVRE ÅRDAL SCANDAL  
Vegard has his magic back, but he’s busted down to Level 8!

SUPERPOWERED CRIMINALS FLOOD THE STREETS: What does it mean for you?

AURINDAEL BESIEGED  
Svart Freidag: "This isn’t punishment. This is justice."  
New election on the horizon?

VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE FOR AURINDAEL GOLDS  
Election called for April

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS UNDER THREAT  
Samkoma argues right to choose what WE broadcast!

***

"...on public nudity, but if he put as much work into his proposed budget as he did his six-pack, we’d have nothing to complain about."

"Pardon, Finn," Brynjar said from his own spot at the desk, "but one must admit, he hath made both very lean."

"Sure, Brynjar, but when you make yourself lean, it’s called training. When someone else makes you lean"--he raised his eyebrows, tilted his chin forward, and stared solemnly into the camera--"it’s called _starvation_. 

"And speaking of things that have been fading away to nothing, on Monday media outlets were abuzz as Chelsea Drake-Cambriel, the only owner of the Alpha Media Corporation remaining in this dimension, took the helm of the floundering company. Here you see Drake-Cambriel at the press conference Monday morning. Her new hand-picked editorial board promises a number of exciting changes, including fact-checking, but Alpha’s rivals seemed to focus on one thing."

He smiled cheekily into the camera, raising his eyebrows at the right bits as they ran clips of commentators who really ought to have known better, and read snippets from news articles, all talking about the young elf’s cloud of frizzy light brown hair, her unfashionable clothing, and her awkwardness in front of cameras. Omega’s own news program had joked that the company must be nearly bankrupt for her to be in that pantsuit, and the _Vestkysten Kontratrylleformularen_ ’s columnist went so far as to say that it was a good thing there were no fashion police, or she would be away with the others.

" _Right_ ," he sighed on cue, chin in hand. He brought his hand down on the desk, and sat up straight. "Because murder, exploitation, and mind control are on the same level as not having your blues match. If we are going to turn this into a fashion show--" The audience roared at the graphic on screen. "--let me remind you that the other models moved so far to the right that they fell off the runway. And now we see them clad in these fetching green ensembles, perfect for a jog around the Plains of Auðn, or just lounging around in your cell."

At this point he became aware of the small but unmistakable weight on the bridge of his nose, and his stomach flipflopped and his hand jerked. _Hold, Vegard_ , Brynjar’s voice said into his shell. _They are supposified to be there._

He lowered his hand. Right. This was the third time Brynjar had had to remind him not to snatch the glasses off his face. He knew, he _knew_ , but some corner of his brain kept insisting that glasses needed to be off while the cameras were rolling. "And now with local news, here is our very own Brynjar Kvam."

"Thank you, Finn. I are indeed Brynjar Kvam. News of the re-examinating of the Peaceful Haven Act was greeted with jubilation by many, but disgraced former First Magister Nimarael accusifies as-yet-undisgraced current First Magister Tistel of flipflopping. Finn, does you want to put your hand up, like so?”

“Not particularly, Brynjar.”

“Art thou sure?”

“Quite.” 

Vegard put his hand up on cue, blocking a punch from Brynjar. 

“You sees it. Flipflopping. 

“In outdoor news, I has found a very interesting rock. Are it not splendid? Smooth, flat, oblong, light yet heavy, velvety and yet hard. When I holds it to my ear, I can hear Inge telling me I are going off script." He held the rock to his ear for another long moment, an expression of bliss on his face, and then lowered it, hands folded in front of him as he gazed into the camera with suitable gravitas. "And now news in brief: Svein, peaches. Julia, no, a thousand times no. Mohamed, Grandfather. Jurgen, _Caddyshack_. Vierslekt, get it checkified by a doctor. Terje, ask first. Jacqueline, rain. Seohee, you deserve not to be maked to feel small. And now... "

While Brynjar prattled effortlessly, Vegard spared a glance out into the crowd. The April gig, as good as it had been, had only whetted his appetite, and it was good to be in front of an audience again, no matter what the composition. He couldn’t wear his contacts _and_ Finn’s spare glasses, so he was prepared to see a crowd very like the ones he was used to, but now he knew to expect the shimmering of air, the subtle bending of light, and if he concentrated, he could see the shadows of other shapes. When he looked away, out of the corner of his eye the shadows gained form and substance and brilliant colour. 

The message, hesitant and hypothetical, had been waiting for him when he’d gotten back from Bali last week. No one would blame Finn for taking the time off--that was exactly what Jessalyn was doing too--but they couldn’t just leave Brynjar alone up there. Vegard had laughed and said of course he would fill in if it became necessary. He’d cheerfully attended rehearsals and done a couple of quiet run-throughs when the crew had left, and practiced Finn’s mannerisms and his posture and his stillness, and reminded Finn that it was going to be okay and he should just remember to breathe. 

This morning they’d been in the final writing session when Brynjar had sucked in a breath, and his face had lit up oddly. A few seconds later, Finn and Jessalyn got identical text messages. Finn had still been gabbling mostly nonsense syllables as Jessalyn ushered him out the door and into her car. Brynjar had then steered Vegard to the nearest hairophant for a lengthening.

Now Brynjar turned and stared dramatically into the other camera. "Studies showing that as many as one in four hundred and seventy thousand of Scandinavia’s magical people have been imbued with divinity at some point in their lives. This past Sunday, Váli Odinsson cutted the ribbon on the Höðr Odinsson Home for Wayward Gods, a resource centre to catering to the needs of deities in the community. The centre, which are funded in part by Alpha reparations, offer support groups, pantheon counselling, and a destiny clinic. I has had the opportunity to speak with Váli and his co-chairs Beyla Avgrønnen and Nergal Dāpinu Ellatu, and I submit this interview for your viewing pleasure."

Three... two... one... and clear. Vegard breathed a sigh, and sagged back in his chair. This was a wild balancing act, and it was a bit of a rush. He could imagine getting used to it in time, but everything was _so_ different, and he couldn’t relax, not properly, even when the cameras were off. He ran a knuckle down his jawline. He was still keenly aware that he couldn’t do a lot of that and still pass as Finn, but surely some had to be allowed. 

"Itchy, Mr. Weber?" a crew member said, concern in his voice.

"N-- Yeah, a little." That would give him a reason to keep doing it. 

The crew member motioned someone over, Kobber, the lightbender, and she ran a thumb down the side of his face while chanting something under her breath. Suddenly his jawline was... not quite _numb_ , but any sensation in it was considerably diminished.

The audience screeched with laughter at something on the screen. Vegard winced a little. One of the winged people in the third row had a _really_ annoying laugh. The lights were too hot, and the glamours in the audience were starting to mess with his head.

In the front row, Bård made eye contact and passed a hand over the side of his face, and by god, Vegard felt it. It helped. : _You okay?_ :

He thought of Finn doing this all day, every day, under circumstances that weren’t nearly as happy, with anxiety blanketing the whole country. : _Yeah,_ : he thought back, already feeling much steadier. 

"Finn, you’re on in five... four... three... "

Bloody hell, what was he supposed to say again?

"Leave not; Finn have interviewed Furutre, co-chair of Trolls for Tomorrow, and the pure of heart--or minimally, the steadfast of finger--will sees it after the break!"

"I missed the cue," Vegard said in a small voice, when they were clear again.

Brynjar scooted his chair over, and put his hands on Vegard’s shoulders, and squeezed. "Breathe," he said, but he sounded far off.

When they were back, Vegard managed to introduce Finn’s interview without fumbling anything. After this, all they had to do was one more break for ads and the outro, and they were done.

Brynjar let out a sigh and turned to him, just as his phone buzzed. 

"Sorry... sorry... " Vegard whispered, aghast.

Brynjar’s smile was hard to read, but his gesture made it clear that Vegard should check his phone. In the front row, Bård was checking his, and joy suffused his features.

It was from Finn. A picture. A little red and white bundle in the arms of an exhausted, radiant Melantha. 

> Rhiannon Ariadne Helene Weber Aruviel 2.6 kilos  
>  Hair auburn eyes hazel  
>  10 fingers 5 toes  
>  she is PERFECT

Vegard cocked his head at Brynjar, and held up five fingers uncertainly.

Brynjar shrugged. "You read as I read: she are perfect."

The phone buzzed again; Bård’s reply had gone to everyone.

> She’s beautiful, Finn  
>  Congratulations  
>  Tell her for us, welcome to the family

"Come on, phone away, Finn. Ten seconds... bloody hell, Brynjar, is he _crying?_ Five... four... "

When the taping was over, when they were clear, Vegard sank back in his chair for a long minute, letting the applause wash over him. He waited, eyes closed, until most of the audience had streamed out, and there were only a few stragglers crowded by the exits. Then he pushed himself to his feet--he ached with tension he hadn’t known he'd been holding--and wandered over to the edge of the stage, to where Brynjar perched, chatting with Bård. Vegard sprawled out on his belly and reached down to get a hug from Bård, and Brynjar took that opportunity to dig his knuckle into a knot right between Vegard’s shoulder blades, and they all made plans to visit the new parents as soon as was decent tomorrow. But Vegard gently refused their offers of a ride. Instead he levered himself to his feet, and slipped backstage. After skinning off Finn’s ridiculous elven-cut burgundy suit and hanging it up in the closet-sized dressing room, he left via the rear exit. 

The show had been well received, but not so well received that there was a gauntlet to run. Vegard emerged into a quiet paved alley and a warm spring night. With a sigh of relief, he finally snatched the glasses off his face, feeling like a great weight had been lifted from him. 

He paused to reach into his jacket and put his own contact lenses in. The air smelled like rain and green things. A cherry tree leaned over someone’s back fence, its roots heaving up the asphalt, and the air was heavy with the scent of its blossoms. 

Vegard walked around to the edge of the parking lot, where a heartstoppingly beautiful woman leaned against her car, waiting for him.

"You look beat," Helene said softly, wrapping her arms around him. "How’d it go?"

Vegard stepped back and grinned at her. "It went okay. I’m glad I could help.” 

She chuckled softly. “But it’s good to be yourself again?”

“It is very, _very_ good to be me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suggested musical pairing: Modestep's "Flying High" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOjf7MABBu8

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! Like I said, awfully dark. But it did get better. And now that part's over, and it's out of my system, and we can go back to lighthearted romps. If you made it this far, thank you. 
> 
> I would also like to thank: 
> 
> hexa-flexa-flouride for the best cover I can imagine, which has brought me huge amounts of joy, and for other assorted wonderful artwork, viewable at http://hexa-flexa-flouride.tumblr.com/.
> 
> The Megalithic Portal (www.megalithic.co.uk), and in particular user kenntha88.   
> Many of the anchor sites that Vegard visits are real places, and kenntha88 has done the monumental task of photographing them all, rating them all, and including details about the surrounding area.
> 
> The Script Family of blogs on Tumblr, for kindly answering numerous anons. Heartily recommended for research. 
> 
> humbae, hoosonja, minolyn, natalunasans, Aozi, and LillieWescott for general awesomeness. 
> 
> ringading and devi2356 for specific awesomeness, in the form of wonderfully encouraging comments, valuable questions, and help with juggling a more complex plot than I had hitherto attempted.
> 
> Everyone who made my Oslo experience a joy, including but not limited to Lee Hamilton, the Vancouverite grocery store owner, the staff at Anker Hostel, the folks at the used bookstore, the shopkeeper who waited patiently while I stumbled through what I was trying to say, the kind ticket booth operator who passed along my gifts to our boys, and the lovely hijabi woman who scraped me off the icy pavement and set me back on my feet.
> 
> My students last year, for being themselves.
> 
> My parents and my brother, for putting up with me; and Mom in particular, for sitting through hour upon hour of footage.
> 
> My wonderful partner Will, for following me to the frozen wastes of Northern Ontario, and for trying to make me cereal just the way I like it.
> 
> All of you who read and liked and commented. 
> 
> And of course, Vegard and Bård and Calle and Magnus, who will probably never see this, and that is almost certainly for the best. :)


End file.
